I discovered this wonderful discussion site Kindleboards a few weeks ago. (This link takes you to the thread on my book, but of course there is loads more there.)
The downside, is it is feeding my growing appetite to actually get one of the little buggers for myself. If Amazon drops the price to the magic $99 level, I think I'll take the plunge--or put one on my Christmas list.
The site has also taught me a lot about what has drawn so many people to the Kindle, and how they experience books on them. That's great insight for an author. But a few mini surprises have come up for me. Like . . .
Kindles don't include page numbers.
Huh. I get why: the Kindle screen varies from what a printed book page includes, and because you set your own font size, I varies from person to person.
But this gnaws at me as an author. I love that the device tailors the display to each reader, but I have this conception of both chapters and pages as these entities I've created: sort of vessels that hold a certain amount of info. And I don't feel completely comfortable with it being dismissed.
Maybe that's silly, but I have some practical concerns. It came up this weekend, as I was working on a big expansion and re-design of the Columbine Instructor Guide. We broke out suggested reading assignments for various topics. For example, here's the actual reading list for one topic:
PTSD (and recovery). Pages:
So how do you tell students what to read on a Kindle? Young people are likely to be early adopters, and schools will be a huge market once prices come down.
It also seems to me that I cite page numbers from time to time when discussing books--especially in class, when I was in grad school: constantly. ("On page xxx, I liked how . . .") I would think book clubs have the same issue, though I've never been in one. But they are very important to sustaining books.
Do you guys find yourselves hampered by that much?
I think they need to create something. Seems easy enough. Or is there some other way to do it?
BTW, here's the new look for the instructor guide. We're still working on it. I hope to have it complete next week.
The downside, is it is feeding my growing appetite to actually get one of the little buggers for myself. If Amazon drops the price to the magic $99 level, I think I'll take the plunge--or put one on my Christmas list.The site has also taught me a lot about what has drawn so many people to the Kindle, and how they experience books on them. That's great insight for an author. But a few mini surprises have come up for me. Like . . .
Kindles don't include page numbers.
Huh. I get why: the Kindle screen varies from what a printed book page includes, and because you set your own font size, I varies from person to person.
But this gnaws at me as an author. I love that the device tailors the display to each reader, but I have this conception of both chapters and pages as these entities I've created: sort of vessels that hold a certain amount of info. And I don't feel completely comfortable with it being dismissed.
Maybe that's silly, but I have some practical concerns. It came up this weekend, as I was working on a big expansion and re-design of the Columbine Instructor Guide. We broke out suggested reading assignments for various topics. For example, here's the actual reading list for one topic:
PTSD (and recovery). Pages:
- 96-98 (Chapter 19 “Vacuuming”)
- 101-2, 106-7
- 116-122
- 281-292
- 312-314
- 354-8 (Chapter 53 “At the Broken Places”)
So how do you tell students what to read on a Kindle? Young people are likely to be early adopters, and schools will be a huge market once prices come down.
It also seems to me that I cite page numbers from time to time when discussing books--especially in class, when I was in grad school: constantly. ("On page xxx, I liked how . . .") I would think book clubs have the same issue, though I've never been in one. But they are very important to sustaining books.
Do you guys find yourselves hampered by that much?
I think they need to create something. Seems easy enough. Or is there some other way to do it?BTW, here's the new look for the instructor guide. We're still working on it. I hope to have it complete next week.
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kfujioka
Nick Leshi
Judy Berman
Christopher di Spirito
SaucyB
gaypersonsofcolor
Salon.com
Comments
Given that my field is academic, I deal with footnotes all day long, that have specific cites to specific editions and page numbers in books. What will happen to those cites in a Kindle?
Cites will become different. Kindle/iPad does still have chapters. If you find a chapter, and search for a specific sentence, you can still pinpoint a specific spot in a chapter.
I wonder how the Chicago Manual of Style and/or the Harvard BlueBook will deal with this issue. The latest edition of Chicago just came out, and I haven't upgraded yet. I'm hoping they take this on.
As for the page numbers issue, yeah, it takes some getting used to, but there's a "progress bar" at the bottom of the screen that lets you know the percentage of the book you've read and the percentage remaining. Also, depending on the ebook, you can "jump" to different chapters of the book, and you can also "bookmark" favorite sections or important parts so you can easily go back to them.
I think the challenges stem from the stuff we've learned from print-centric reading, and they're not as dire to overcome as we might imagine. As a bibliophile myself, I had my reservations about the Kindle, but now I'm a believer.
it seems really odd to me that the amazon team still has not sorted out this basic issue.
(but then i don't think they're quite an A team. the kindle is getting pretty good, but it's taken several years: and they were building on at least ten years of previous ereaders and users before they started. compare that to the iphone. those people TOTALLY get what a user wants in his/her hand.)
nick, i get that some things are just print-oriented relics that will disappear in time. i don't think having a standard identifier to discuss portions of the book with other people is one of them.
this seems like really narrow thinking from the design team: thinking of a reader in isolation: where a %read bar is as good as a page number. but books are a collective experience, too. we discuss them, study them, form book clubs around them.
There is an app you can download for your Kindle that gives you a form to fill out to figure out the "actual" page number. Even though I miss page numbers, I don't use it.
As for schools wanting it, the thing is there will always be an "official" textbook. If that moves to the Kindle, then those without one will have to figure out where they are. It would be reminiscent of taking a university course that decides to use a new edition. Students that chose not to buy that edition because the older one was cheaper would not have the same page number references as their prof.
To be honest, I find this to be a much more useful way to locate text than using page numbers in printed books, which can often vary from edition to edition. There's nothing worse than getting a study guide which was written for a hardback, for instance, but that is out of sync for the paper back edition of the same book.