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Ebook Reader Problems and Issues

Posted July 28th, 2009 by wcrawford
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Several of the commentaries on ebooks include positive and negative notes. In the interests of keeping articles focused and within reasonable length, this article covers specific problems and issues--primarily with the Kindle, but also with other ebook readers.

Is the Kindle (Are Dedicated Ereaders) Doomed?

If you're trying to chart any sort of path for yourself or your library regarding ebooks, you must be asking this question. It's not quite the same question as "Will the iPad conquer everything?"--although, if the answer to that is "yes" then the answer to the first must also be "yes." Beyond Apple triumphalism, there are good reasons to question the future of Amazon's Kindle as:

  • The dominant dedicated ebook reader.
  • A substantially successful device (as opposed to a short-lived success that fades away).

There's also the encompassing issue: Now that the Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook and others have solved the battery-life and transmitted-light ebook issues by using e-ink, does that solution turn out to be worthless? Are users more enamored of color or multifunctionality than of a "booklike" experience that doesn't require constant recharging? There is little agreement on these issues.

E-Readers at CES 2010

Thomas Ricker, in "The e-Reader story of CES 2010" (posted January 9, 2010 at engadget), sees a "massive uptick in manufacturers showing off e-reader devices, software and technology" and looks forward to the slew of "electronic ink also-rans, hybrids, and new screen technologies" knocking off "the incumbent Kindle, underlying E Ink technology, and Amazon juggernaut." His precise words: "If we're lucky, that's exactly what's going to happen later in the year." 

Why will it be a good thing if not only the Kindle but E-ink in general is "knocked off"?

We begin to see the story of a 2010 e-reader market that extends way beyond just e-books to include newspapers and magazines augmented with audio and full-color animations, video, and imagery. As such, dedicated monochrome E-Ink devices like Kindle and the Sony Reader will be forced even deeper into the niche they now serve as the year plays out. One thing's for sure--monochrome electronic ink displays are not the future of e-readers. If you ask us, the smart money is on multi-purpose devices running hybrid displays from Pixel Qi (or similar) like Notion Ink's Adam. Not only does this avoid lock in to a single content provider, but you maintain full Internet access with the ability to subscribe to materials from Skiff, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Blio, Google, and iTunes, for example, while enjoying the type of rich multimedia experiences that main stream media publications are keen to pursue. (Emphasis added.)

2010: The Only Year of the E-Reader

That's the headline on Kit Eaton's January 12, 2010 story at Fast Company. Eaton notes the Kindle looking "almost lost now among the flurry of new e-book reading devices" but says "e-readers are doomed." (Worth noting: Eaton does not predict the death of physical books.)

"I'm going to argue that 2010 is the first and last year of the e-reader. Because they'll look awkward and clunky in 2011, and though they'll survive as a tech genre it'll be as useful if niche products. You see 2010 is also the year of the Tablet PC... a device that has much of the same form-factor as an e-reader, and which can do all the same clever e-book reading. And an infinite amount more."

Eaton is positively argumentative about the advantages of e-ink-based ereaders: "And before you go harping on about long battery life and the benefits of e-ink for reading, then slates (if they take tech cues from netbooks, which they will) will have battery life that's just about long enough, and screens that are good enough for reading from." In other words, "good enough" will triumph over better--as long as it comes with "the benefits of a muiltitouch screen and motion-sensing control."

It's the iPad, Stupid...or Not

Roy Tennant also believes "single-purpose e-book readers like the Kindle are dead, dead, dead." Tennant's proclivity for proclaiming death notwithstanding, he writes off the Kindle (and others) because of the iPad and a general dislike for dedicated devices. He judges readability to be "fully as good as the Kindle" based on...well, based on nothing.

Leo Klein disagrees with the notion that the iPod is the "Kindle Killer," in a February 22, 2010 post at Chicago Librarian--but offers a surprising alternative as the "Kindle Killer": the Dell Mini 5, with an 800x400 screen and a size "somewhere between a smart phone and a netbook." The device, which won't be on the market until later this year, has a 5" touchscreen and "almost a day" of battery life.

The New York Times had competing posts in its Bits blog:

  • Nick Bilton offered "Three Reasons Why the iPad WILL Kill Amazon's Kindle" in a January 27, 2010 post. He says the iPad is "now clearly the best defice on the market for those who enjoy reading." His three reasons: Content is changing, but the Kindle is not. (That is, "reading" is becoming "consuming multimedia" and the Kindle's no good for that.) The Kindle's technology isn't evolving fast enough. (He doesn't like the keyboard and lack of color.) The Kindle is too expensive for a single-purpose device. As to the virtues of e-ink, the fact that the iPad weighs twice as much, battery life...Bilton doesn't deal with those at all.
  • That same day, Brad Stone offered "Three Reasons Why the iPad WON'T Kill Amazon's Kindle." His reasons: The Kindle is for book lovers, and the iPad is not. (The iPad may get the "two-books-a-year folks" but e-ink, lower price and better battery life all matter, and there's a virtue to being single-purpose.) Amazon will continue to improve on the Kindle and The Kindle store will continue to thrive. (Of course, the Kindle store could survive without the Kindle continuing to succeed.) Both posts have loads of comments, some agreeing, some disagreeing--more than 90 for Bilton, more than 110 for Stone.

Wired was heard from on the same day, with Fred Vogelstein's "The iPad Will Violate the Kindle's Space, And Other First Impressions." His reasoning? He claims it's "better" than the Kindle, costs "about the same" and "does so much more." Book reading is better "because the screen is in color." He also simply asserts that " if you’d buy a Kindle, you’d definitely buy an iPad." And, of course, the final reason Wired considers something a surefire winner: "because it's cool."

A brief lifehacker item comparing the iPad to current ebook readers editorially favors "convergence devices," but the majority of comments seem to hold that the iPad shouldn't even be considered as a direct alternative--that e-ink and long battery life really do matter. That may turn out to be the most important question.

Do E-Readers Cause Eye Strain?

That's the title of a February 12, 2010 item by Nick Bilton on the New York Times' Bits blog. "The act of reading is going through a number of radical transitions, but perhaps none is more fundamental than the shift from reading on paper to reading on screens. As consumers decide whether to make this jump and which technology to use, one key question is how reading on a screen affects the eyes."

After noting the usual--that reading on a screen won't actually damage your eyes--the discussion gets into fatigue issues: Screen ergonomics, contrast (e-ink is relatively low contrast at this point), viewing angles (LCD screens tend to have narrow viewing angles) and the need to take breaks when reading from any screen. The last word seems to come from Carl Taussig of HP's Information Surfaces Lab, who doesn't see a Single Winner: "I don’t think there is a single technology that will be optimum for all the things we want to do with our devices. For example, H.P. sells 65 million displays a year, and they are all used in a different way."

Comments include those who claim that ereaders cause less eyestrain than books, some who found that e-ink's low contrast caused headaches and preferred LCDs (and others who find that LCDs cause them "eyestrain"--which is fatigue, not actual strain--and that e-ink is much better) and more (including, of course, the term "Luddites" for those who still read print books).

Kindle DX as E-textbook

Notes and excerpts from "Kindles yet to woo University users," published September 28, 2009 in The Daily Princetonian...and noting that two weeks may not be long enough to judge long-term success.

When Princeton University announced a Kindle e-reader pilot program in May 2009, administrators seemed cautiously optimistic that the e-readers would both be sustainable and serve as a valuable academic tool. But less than two weeks after 50 students received the free Kindle DX e-readers, many of them said they were dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the devices.

On Wednesday, the University revealed that students in three courses--Civil Society and Public Policy, U.S. Policy and Diplomacy in the Middle East, and Religion and Magic in Ancient Rome--were given new Kindle DXs containing their course readings for the semester...

Though they acknowledged some benefits of the new technology, many students and faculty in the three courses said they found the Kindles disappointing and difficult to use. “I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool,” said Aaron Horvath ’10... “It’s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.”...“Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes and other marks representing the importance of certain passages--not to mention margin notes...” “All these things have been lost, and if not lost they’re too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the ‘features’ have been rendered useless.”..

One of [Professor Stan] Katz’ main concerns is whether students can do close reading of the texts with the new device... “I require a very close reading of texts. I encourage students to mark up texts, and … I expect them to underline and to highlight texts,” Katz explained. “The question is whether you can do them as effectively with a Kindle as with paper.”... Katz also added that the absence of page numbers in the Kindle makes it more difficult for students to cite sources consistently...

Classics professor Harriet Flower, who teaches Religion and Magic in Ancient Rome, said...the Kindle “is very easy on the eye,” adding that she could “read for longer without [her] eyes feeling tired.” But Rachel George ’10, a student in Katz’ class, said...that she has found it “a little difficult to adjust to the e-reader.” [Despite the advantage of having large quantities of reading at your fingertips], “Some disadvantages are the necessity to charge the Kindle and the impossibility of ‘flipping through’ a book.” George also said the annotation software was “useful but not as easy or ‘organic’ feeling as taking notes on paper.”

You can find a very different and much more positive set of perspectives on ebook readers and textbooks in "7 Things You Should Know About...E-Readers" from Educause. The document (a two-page PDF) repeats a claim that "2009 sales of textbook downloads rose 400 percent" over 2008, without providing the 2008 baseline. It notes the growing number of ebook pilot programs. "E-readers are changing the economics for buyers and sellers of text-based intellectual property, including educational materials." On the other hand, e-readers may be tempting targets for theft, are more breakable than books and have DRM and accessibility issues.

Digital Rights (Restrictions) Management

At least for the Kindle and Amazon Kindle store, you're not really buying ebooks--because you don't have first sale rights, thanks to DRM:

  • You can't give the ebook away or sell it as a used ebook--that is, legally remove it from your Kindle and in the process legally load it on someone else's Kindle.
  • You can't lend it without lending your Kindle, for the same reasons.

But there's a third reason why “buying” may be the wrong word:

  • If your Kindle dies, you upgrade to a newer model, or you prefer to read your ebooks on iPods, you may or may not be able to retrieve your “purchases.”

Some commentaries on Kindle DRM now appear in Ebooks and Readers--Recent Histories--with the note that most ebooks for dedicated readers (except for those in the public domain) come with some form of DRM.

Text-to-speech controversy

By Walt Crawford and not written as a neutral comment.

After Amazon announced Kindle 2 features, including text-to-speech capabilities, Paul Aiken of the Authors Guild asserted that “They don't have the right to read a book out loud. That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.” (The link here, to a thoughtful commentary on this issue by Tim Spalding, links to a direct quote in the Wall Street Journal.

Neil Gaiman heard that argument from his agent and responded:

When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it.

While Spalding thinks the Authors Guild--possibly emboldened by its ”victory” over Google--might have a case, others are less convinced (unless that case is based on contracts between Amazon and publishers rather than copyright). As lquilter puts it in a comment:

Basically none of the six “exclusive rights” of the copyright holder are violated:

 

  • It's not a reproduction because there is no fixation.
  • This isn't a “derivative work” because there is no original expression added to it (and it's not fixed).
  • This isn't a “public performance” because it's not performed in public.

 

 

 

No exclusive right, so no copyright infringement. No need to get to the various exceptions and exclusions--the fact that this is arguably an accommodation for the blind, or fair use which is also a pretty good argument in this instance.

 

I'll repeat my own comment on that post:

This absurdity is one reason I've never serious considered joining Authors Guild. Every Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X computer comes with text-to-speech capabilities; so does Adobe Reader; and there are free Linux text-to-speech capabilities. Saying they're all illegal if used on copyright text (and all text is technically copyright as soon as it's stored on a PC) is so far beyond the pale...

The National Federation of the Blind issued a response, noting particularly the Authors Guild suggestion that its members negotiate contracts explicitly prohibiting use of the Kindle 2 text-to-speech technology. Portions of that response (by Dr. Marc Maurer, president of NFB):

Although the Authors Guild claims that it supports making books accessible to the blind, its position on the inclusion of text-to-speech technology in the Kindle 2 is harmful to blind people. The Authors Guild says that having a book read aloud by a machine in the privacy of one’s home or vehicle is a copyright infringement. But blind people routinely use readers, either human or machine, to access books that are not available in alternative formats like Braille or audio. Up until now, no one has argued that this is illegal, but now the Authors Guild says that it is. This is absolutely wrong. The blind and other readers have the right for books to be presented to us in the format that is most useful to us, and we are not violating copyright law as long as we use readers, either human or machine, for private rather than public listening. The key point is that reading aloud in private is the same whether done by a person or a machine, and reading aloud in private is never an infringement of copyright.

It's also worth noting that Authors Guild appears to be arguing for limits on first-sale rights (that is, preventing readers from using the book they've purchased in the manner they prefer), which is probably consistent with the group's overall policy.

Quick update: Amazon caved in to the Authors Guild--saying that authors and publishers could determine whether the text-to-speech feature would be enabled for each book.

Fuzzy fonts on the Kindle 2?

An April 13, 2009 piece in Wired's Gadget Lab notes a case where improved technology in the Kindle 2 may backfire. Excerpts:

"When you read a lot of text on the screen, the contrast on the text drops as the font size gets smaller, which is the exact opposite of what the reader wants,” says Ted Inoue, a Kindle 2 owner from Pennsylvania who has extensively analyzed the issue.

It's a problem that didn't exist for the first generation of Kindle owners. Kindle 2 has font smoothing algorithms and its screen offers more levels of gray in order to better render text and pictures. But the changes have backfired by making text more difficult to read at smaller sizes. The problem seems especially acute for older users.

Where the Kindle had four shades of gray, the Kindle 2 has 16 shades of gray--and offers only one default typeface. On the smallest of the three font sizes, that seems to cause difficulties for some readers.

"The new basic font on the Kindle 2 is thinner and not as dark as the K1,” says Andrys Basten, a Berkeley, California-based web programmer who also has a Kindle-focused blog. “Its like writing with a fine point pen versus a darker point pen.” Basten owns both generations of the Kindle.

Then there are the font smoothing algorithms. Without those algorithms, pixels along the edge of a letter would have typically been rendered as black. Instead, they are now available in several shades of gray... “In conventional backlit displays that works well,” Inoue says. “But on a reflective screen like Kindle's, you are just losing contrast rather than enhancing the image.”

The algorithms do produce smoother lines but they do not take into account the human psychology of perception, says Inoue. “Most people don't have perfect vision,” he says. “What I find is that anything that degrades the contrast is going to make it blurrier.”

Amazon says the disgruntled customers' gripes are not reflective of how most users feel. “A few customers have said they prefer Kindle 1 with [fewer] shades of gray, but for the overwhelming majority it’s the opposite--they enjoy the smoother text and crisper images on Kindle 2,” says Andrew Herdener, director of communications for Amazon in a statement, without offering any other details.

One temporary solution? Make smaller type bold.

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