For this weeks blog post, I decided to take on the article What Readers Need vs. What Devices
Can Do by Peter Meyers.
Reading his post, at first I was
agreeing with his key points. But after finishing the article, I kept circling
back to a question we bring up in class often: yes but what makes an enhanced
e-book different?
For example, I'll walk through Meyers five
points on how enhanced e-books can better provide for readers need, and not
just be flashy examples of the cool things our tech can accomplish. His five
points are "comprehension, memory,
interpretation, relevance, and extraction/action".
First, let's tackle comprehension
and memory, because I see these two as having similar functionalities. Meyers
talks about pop-up bubbles that will define words, give memory jogs about
characters or big events to remember, and he argues that these pop-up bubbles
are less disruptive to a reader than a foot note, or end-note, and by extension
I assume his argument also covers flipping to the front or back of a book for
the included dictionary or index list.
My issue: I don't buy the
argument that it is less disruptive to the reading flow to click a pop-up
bubble and click out of it, than to scan to the end of the page for a foot
note. Perhaps it is slightly less disruptive than tapping your bookmark and
jumping to the index in an e-book but only slightly. Also, I own e-books that already
have this functionality. If I would like a word defined, I can do that on my
very low tech glow light Nook. Changing the text of the bubble from a
definition to a "memory jogger" doesn't feel like a very big
enhancement to me. I'm not seeing the difference between a regular old e-book
and an enhanced e-book on these first two points.
Moving to the third point,
interpretation. I am iffy on this enhancement because I always feel as if you
take a big risk reading the shortened version of the third party than the full
text of the author. First, I'm not sure if a leisure reader would ever take this
option. I'm not interested in the short version of my favorite fantasy novel,
and I feel that within an educational setting CliffNotes versions of text is
never a great idea. Maybe this enhancement fulfills more of a reader 'want'
than 'need'. Also, if regular e-versions of these texts exist, the enhancement
feature is merely an inclusion of that short version, inside or along side the
original text. Perhaps this is a personality issue of mine, and the
interpretation enhancement would really be helpful for others. I'm interested
in the opinion of my classmates on this matter.
Relevance and extraction/action I
see as true enhancements that could launch enhanced e-books onto the market.
However, I am having a tough time seeing these enhancements outside of
practical genres, like the examples of travel and cook books. Perhaps with the
media boom happening around fiction and fantasy novels lately, the relevance
and extraction/action enhancements could be connected out to a television
series or movie tie in.
Ultimately, I think I am still at
a point where I am either not seeing the separation between some enhancements
and how they are different than what a regular e-book offers, or I am not
buying the argument that fulfilling readers actual needs (relevance and
extraction/action) are enough to make enhanced e-books marketable.
I'm interested in further
discussion on these points. Thanks for reading!
Jones
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