e-book lowdown

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Here's a recent story that I wrote and had published in a journalism trade publication.

It's about electronic books. Will e-books replace ink on paper?

Read on:


By Larry Timbs
Special to Publishers’ Auxiliary

If Johannes Gutenberg of movable type fame (1466 in Germany) were alive today, he’d be scratching his head and frowning.
Especially if he eavesdropped on professional development workshops for journalists working on America’s newspapers.

The main talk, sometimes, it seems, the only talk, at these workshops and conventions centers on the digital age.

It’s about the Web

It’s about figuring out how to deliver news via such technology as cell phones, I-Pods, satellites or Wi-Fi.

Those who work in the newspaper industry are consumed with digital technology.

Yes, Gutenberg, who loved the printed word on paper, would be puzzled and bedeviled by it all.

The blogosphere and the rush of newspapers and other information media to rush head first into it would blow his mind. “What’s going on here?” he’d muse, confronted with the specter of newspapers and other print media downsizing their pages, making their type smaller, or even abandoning ink on paper in favor of electrons or pixels on a screen.

But wait.

It might be best to re-think predictions of the demise of ink on paper for newspapers, magazines and books. Yes, it may turn out that they eventually will not be printed on paper, but that is probably decades away.

Readers, according to a university administrator who has been reading and exploring a Sony e-book (called an “e-Reader”), won’t soon abandon their traditional newspapers and books.

Mark Herring is dean of Dacus Library Services at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C. He recently has been sought out by the local press, professors, staff, students at Winthrop and by others to give his take on a $400 Sony e-book (called an e-Reader) purchased by the library as an experiment.

The library’s e-book is portable enough, weighing only six ounces and capable of storing up to 80 conventional books.

As e-books go, it holds a charge pretty well (up to 7,500 page turns with one charge, according to Herring). Plus, you can easily change type size and bookmark a page electronically. “The e-book cleverly electronically dog ears the page,” Herring said.

The Sony e-Reader’s resolution—reader-friendliness of the screen and print--is quite good, too, he said.

But this pricy electronic gadget has a few negatives.

Herring has read about 300 pages on the Sony e-Reader. An aficionado of printed text on paper, Herring is the author of several printed works himself—the latest titled “Fool’s Gold: Why the Internet Is No Substitute For A Library” (McFarland Publishing, Spring 2007).

The man who treasures books and has a reverence for traditional printed text won’t easily be won over by Sony’s electronic book, Herring said.

“E-books have improved some, but not by much,” he recently wrote. “Sony’s new e-Reader (touting E-Ink technology) offers a solution to the ghost image by using flash technology to erase the ghost image when a page is clicked. “While it works, after a dozen clicks, the novelty has long since disappeared,” added Herring, who believes it will be at least another 50 years (and maybe more) before e-books win over readers. “On-screen resolution is better but it is still only about 50 percent of the printed page. This reader reads better under various kind of lighting but direct sunlight is still a problem.”

This business about light is holding back e-books, he said.

Reading an e-book, after you’re accustomed to snuggling up with traditional ink on paper books, is a letdown, he noted.

One explanation: We humans for the past thousands of years (even before Gutenberg) have been reading text with light coming from over our shoulders. With the e-book, light comes from the screen.

That sort of digital fly in the ointment surfaced with students in a journalism/mass communication class at Winthrop, where Herron recently spoke about and passed around the e-book for the audience to explore.

One of the ideas touched upon when Herron spoke about e-book technology was the possibility that one day students might have all their textbooks in one portable lightweight e-book—like the Sony e-Reader.

Some students liked the thought of carrying one e-book in their purse or back pocket—as opposed to lugging around 5-7 textbooks in a backpack all day. Still, though, when they made a test read of a few pages on the e-Reader, many were less than impressed.

“When reading the e-book first hand, I noticed that it was more straining on the eyes than the average paper book,” said 19-year-old Patrick Gerasia, a freshman pre-mass communication major from West Palm Beach, Fla.

“I think the e-book is a great idea, but the world may not be ready for it yet,” wrote El Novak, a sophomore pre-integrated marketing major from Simpsonville, S.C.

Algierre Barron, 21, wonders whether someone would inadvertently damage himself or herself with an e-book. “I think that reading an entire book online would be tiring and I would want to know what the health consequences would be over long periods of exposure,” wrote Barron, a junior history major from Georgetown, S.C.

Likewise, Ryan Martin, a sophomore majoring in family and consumer sciences, thinks that people, given a chance to sample e-books, will soon tire of them and return to traditional books.

“I personally was unimpressed with the e-book and do not see it flying off the shelves at Best Buy,” Martin said. “The e-book is small and portable, yes, but annoying and expensive as well.” The “annoying flash you have to deal with at every page,” lowered Martin’s opinion of the e-book.

Forty-seven-year-old Robyn Bunch, a mass communication major from Charlotte, N.C., said that from her brief encounter with the e-Reader she can’t imagine reading an entire book on it. She noted that her attention span is much shorter when reading material on a computer: “I will generally print out anything over a page or two pages. It is difficult to imagine reading an entire book on the device; I believe it would take much longer to read than a regular book and then might affect my enjoyment of the material.”

And the future of such technology?

Martin, Herring and others don’t see e-books taking hold with readers for many years (maybe several decades.)

Books, possibly the oldest form of mass media and for centuries one of the most cherished means of distributing information and knowledge, are tried and true. That’s a dominant theme emerging from many of those at Winthrop who have read a few pages from e-books.

It seems likely, then, that e-books won’t soon replace their traditional counterparts. That’s heartening news for book publishers worried, among other things, about the copyright implications of e-books.

Digitally skeptical newspaper publishers, too, (especially those who cling resolutely to ink on paper) should breathe easier.

Martin may have summed it up best: “It seems ridiculous to me that we are now trying to modernize one of the most ancient of ideas. I don’t want to be at my church in 10 years reading the New Testament from a hand held. That seems so blah. The best part of a book is being able to pick it up and read it time and time again and then pass it down through your family. The wear and tear the actual copy of the book takes makes it that much more special and personal. Technology is anything but personal.”

Larry Timbs is an associate professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Winthrop University. Adviser to the campus SPJ chapter, he’s also faculty adviser to the student newspaper at Winthrop—which has a Web site and podcasts but which is also still printed with ink on paper.