The future of e-books

Humanity is still reading books.

Perhaps humanity has begun to read less than it used to, with the advent of various social networks and other constantly updated news sources. All the same books remain with us. Often, having noticed a new book on sale, we want to buy a copy for ourselves, and the paper version remains the subject of desire. This happens for various reasons - someone wants to re-smell the freshly printed pages, someone wants to touch the thing and the "weight" of the words on the pages in the cover, which can be put on the shelf of the rack in your collection, and someone will read from countless reviews that with the electronic option you will have problems, but stop! How did it happen that in the age of electronic technology we will have problems reading the electronic edition? Is it really that bad? The answer to this question will be ...

... like Yes and No.

Artistic text

If we are talking about fiction, recently there has appeared a huge number of devices on electronic inks, which seem to be a pleasure to read at first sight. However, all of them are not perfect, although they provide an excellent opportunity to reduce the library to a small gadget, the dimensions of which allow you to take it with you anywhere without special obstacles. In addition, this device is three times thinner than the average book, not to mention how easy it can be. With us in our pocket we can have the entire collection of the works of your favorite author, moreover, in how many languages. I would not like to focus only on fiction, however, there are, in principle, several remarks to all devices for reading, and it is worthwhile to voice them.
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U-turn

All devices have only one main screen, and no matter how hard we try to fit all the information in it, one screen is not a complete replacement of the book. Rather, it is a scroll, and, thanks to flexible displays, we can already imagine at this moment a device that completely repeats the construction of the “scroll” as a whole. All that we have on the market today is electronic scrolls, and not electronic books.
The turn in itself provides two working surfaces from which we receive information. It’s convenient for us to work with a book like this, because we can cover 2 times more information than on one page. We often use this simple device of the book in order to look at what was read a few seconds ago. Now remember the moment when you turned the page, but suddenly got confused in the story and turn back to better understand what it was about. At the same time, we are keeping the page vertically and comparing the text from the “face” and “seamy side” of one page — not very convenient, but we use this technique, but with a full-fledged spread it would be better.
The ideal turn would be the one in which the right side is active, and the left shows the previous page. After turning over, we will still look at the right side, but we can always take a look at the previous page without the need to use the above described clever way to view a vertical page from two sides.

Turning mechanism

Recently, many devices have moved from mechanical buttons to touch screens. However, if we recall the speed of turning over and the absence of tactile feedback, then we sometimes find ourselves in a situation where turning over does not occur, or it only seems that way to us - and we turn over again, turning out to be through the page ahead. If we recall leafing through a paper book, this is a sequential process of several steps, which takes a sufficient amount of time. In comparison, a slight delay in the process of turning the e-book would be appropriate. The key points of turning over are two things - the feeling that we just faked the next page (often we even checked if we picked up one more page more than once), as well as fixing a new reversal after performing the turning ritual. It is important for us that the flipping happens correctly, and we want to be sure of this. So how did it happen that the devices, because of the love of their developers for sensory interaction mechanisms, stopped responding to us with this reliability? The lack of tactile feedback at the time of turning is felt constantly. And if we realize it, then a double signal is desirable, which signals the beginning and end of turning over. After all, the previously used mechanical button was quite an acceptable option - with it, we definitely felt a characteristic click or click at the moment of pressing. And if the buttons are mechanical, then it is still most convenient to place them to the right and left of the turn. If you recall this book, then in the lower or upper corner, but not the bottom of the working area! On the left - exactly in the upper one, and on the right, if you must be sure - you can add as many as two buttons (note: this is about reading from left to right). The touch mechanism without feedback is misleading anyone who has ever worked with him - we know that you only need to touch once to get action. The problem is that from a routine ritual, flipping has become a tricky game with a sensory interaction mechanism.

Technical literature

For a large part of the audience of this article, the technical literature aspect is important. And in this regard, unfortunately, reading devices lose out to paper versions. Since if we can somehow reconcile with the absence of a reversal, and we can even get used to the proposed mechanism for turning over completely, then, alas, it will not happen with the impossibility of conveniently obtaining information.

Diagonal

For the most part, there are a lot of small diagonal devices around us (around six inches). It is very difficult to see a large diagram, graph or table on this screen. The main problem of a small diagonal is the inability to see a book in its original form, which is a printed copy. The form in which the author finally agreed it with the editor. A form in which the editor completely accepted it, taking into account all the “magical properties” of a book like “Reversal” and its associated information layout.
But, you argue, there are devices with a larger diagonal! All these devices, of course, exist, but have you seen any significant competition among them? As a consequence of this - have you seen the prices of these devices? Did you see that the largest manufacturer of electronic devices of this type at some point simply abandoned the large diagonals? Have you seen, finally, reviews of specific users? This whole picture is not very enthusiastic.
New, not yet released for the mass public devices, offering the latest 13 "screen, manufacturers are trying to put as something prohibitively professional, corporate, and, as a result, we will again see devices with very unclear, but wide functionality for which an inadequate amount will be required. If we just want to read from the big screen, then the holiday, as has already become a tradition over the past few years, will be held aside.

Chromaticity

Is this factor really interesting for you? Is it important for you that your books play with bright vivid colors? And now name how many colors, no, not even so - how many gradations of gray you need to distinguish between the average graph or pattern. Remember the possibilities of electronic ink at the moment (note: We deliberately omit progress on the side of color electronic ink, because everything on the market makes a poor impression). Do you still want color?
In fact, in the technical literature the need for color is not as great as it seems to many. Recently, we have come across color, except diagrams and graphs - and not always - exclusively for unnecessary advertising of books by the publisher, beautiful highlighting of subtitles and, of course, covers and that’s all! There are practically no options in which we lack the available shades of gray.
The only bright and colorful book in the book is the cover, for viewing of which a separate screen of no more than two or three inches that can show all its colors, if you want, is very suitable. Devices that combine two different screens have already come out, and this option is a mixture of the usual book and a very nice addition to it.

Conclusion first

You already represent a fairly good reading device with a full-fledged spread, a large diagonal, an adequate page turning mechanism and a nice addition in the form of a very small, but glossy colored cover. In the case of a realized spread, such a color cover can be brought out, so that without opening the book one could “wake up” the device and see which book we stopped on, and also, perhaps, see the bookmark and any other necessary information.

The device of the near future

And now some thoughts on the topic. Perhaps you, too, have already come to them, and, as mentioned in the previous article - “... ideas always hover around us. It often happens that, opening the news in the morning, we see exactly what we thought of recently, but did not leave there is no record of this. " Let us try to put together some of the expected and quite realizable opportunities. The capabilities of the device not only for reading, but for the perception of information in general.

New screen

Recently, we increasingly hear mention of flexible displays. Yes, to some extent the future lies with them. The future in which we will be able to halve the size of the device, simply by folding it. We have already encountered prototype devices with this technology, so there is no reason to doubt that the problem of pixels on the fold has been solved. But is it really that important? For fiction - definitely not - in any book there are fields, to adhere to which, undoubtedly, it is worth it, which completely removes the need to fold the screen. For large devices that are intended more for technical literature, this is very useful for the sake of maintaining compactness - remember the newspapers, they are always folded while carrying. However, folding the device in half contains a minus, since it will destroy the idea of ​​“U-turn”, therefore for larger devices it is more reasonable to add a cover in which the second working surface will be embedded. For a universal device, which will be discussed further, this technology will be useful.
Let's digress from flexible displays and recall transparent displays. Yes, there were those too, but they were almost forgotten, before they really knew and tested this technology in end devices. The latest developments are really impressive, showing a dynamic image on a completely transparent surface. Their only drawback - they need lights. Prototypes successfully dealt with this, showing brightly lit boxes with advertised products, on a transparent door which was located such a display.
We have come close enough to the key idea of ​​the new device. Recall the latest e-books. There is already at least a couple of generations of devices with full screen backlighting, and the first thing that comes to mind is to attach a transparent display over this backlight! Pretty obvious, isn't it?



This device will combine all the benefits of e-paper, along with a modern color display. At the moment of playing the content on the color display, the only thing that needs to be done is to clear the background on the substrate and turn on the backlight. At other times, highlighting is not a necessity. We can switch between these two displays at any time. For example, reading an article in a journal, with a link to a video, we can touch the screen, and a video in all the glory of colors will appear over the text. Illustrations can also be “painted” with one touch.

Other features

The number of gadget functions is always a trade-off between performance and power consumption. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that having an excellent screen on the device, you can have all the functions of a modern tablet. On the other hand, considering the target audience of the device, it is clear that it needs only basic functionality in the form of a browser. Everything else should be localized around reading as such. Of the revolutionary ideas used over the past few years, it is worth mentioning only the indication of time until the end of reading the current chapter - and even an indication of just the number of pages before the end of the chapter is already appropriate for adding to all devices. Also very interesting, but rarely a point is the time spent reading the book, and (or) spent on the device as a whole. The statistics are depressing - in Russia at the moment it is known that more than a third of the population does not read books in principle. So, perhaps, for someone, the indication of time will be an incentive to read more pages, read faster, and in general - a small competitive element for all who have a device. And if you add in it “achivments” for reading classics, laureates of literary awards, or popular bestsellers, as well as - an updated list of current literature on the working specialty, etc., then the usefulness of such a device will increase significantly.

Second conclusion

Thank you so much for reading this, or at least viewing this article diagonally. If you have any ideas around all this - please in the comments! It is sad to watch how e-books from luxury and not-for-all devices have suddenly become an obsolete device class. Almost in any store you will be advised to buy a tablet instead of a normal book on electronic ink. But still I want to believe that manufacturers are able to produce a good device, and it is already waiting for us in prototypes that are being tested right now behind closed doors.

PS Couple of rendered concepts

The first device you are already familiar with the description of the device for reading fiction. The only addition is an external color display, which was mentioned a little later.



The second render shows the device from the final part of the article. The device allows you to display both color and "paper" content, as well as to combine both possibilities in the overlay. Due to the flexible display device can be folded in half, and as an accessory it can go extra thin cover, having the same screen, but without the possibility of folding it in half. The cover is highlighted in black in the picture and is attached to the device fixed in the open position.