Usability authority Jakob Nielsen has a very good article about Kindle Content Design & identifies that “Kindle works poorly for non-fiction books that have many illustrations or that require users to frequently refer back and forth between sections. Even if Kindle had a color screen, heavily illustrated books would still be better in print because moving around in Kindle is awkward.”
Nielsen believes that “the ability to inspire deep thinking is why non-fiction books still have value compared with websites….”
Relationship to book design? Designing a non-fiction book is much more stimulating to a book designer than designing a book of fiction since non-fiction offers many more elements for engaging the reader, e.g., diagrams, images, block quotes, pull quotes, captions, sub-headings. These elements all add a level of interaction with the content that changes the way a person reads a book.
Yet, this enriched interaction with a text does not translate smoothly to reflowable e-book formats (e.g., Kindle, ePub, etc.).
To compensate Nielsen advises, and I think this is a very important statement in his article:
“For Kindle, it’s certainly unacceptable to simply repurpose print content. But you can’t repurpose website content, either. For good Kindle usability, you have to design for the Kindle. Write Kindle-specific headlines and create Kindle-specific article structures.”
Read this part again: “But you can’t repurpose website content, either.” There’s an irony behind that since the underlying format behind Kindle & ePub is HTML & CSS.
Well, this should certainly keep writers, editors, and designers busy. But is it cost-effective for a publisher?
Or are lower-cost, mostly automated, quick-&-dirty conversions good enough for users that prefer mobile devices and reflowable text? Or, good enough for now until this market shakes out over the course of the next few years and we all see what device and formats are really going to dominate? In 5 years perhaps the Kindle will be nothing more than a netbook, and in that case we’re back to using PDF and/or designing for Web browsers and creating a stylesheet for mobile devices.
Is This Insanity?
From a strategic standpoint the difficulty of a publisher designing for the Kindle is that in the mid-1990s we entered an age of continuously redesigning content. Or as Nielsen says, “It’s simply the 1995 lesson updated to a 2009 device.” And I’m only referring to digital content, not the porting of print to digital. But what happens with the 2010 device, the 2011 device, the 2012 device? Evolving technological capabilities have kept Web designers gainfully employed for years now.
As a person running a design firm I should be an enthusiastic champion for specifically redesigning books for Kindle. But just as Web sites are often redesigned every few years to incorporate new features offered by advances in technology, will we see e-books redesigned every few years? Or should the focus be elsewhere, such as thinking about how to create original digital content that doesn’t have a corresponding print component? Or perhaps the print component of digital content is a deeper, more engaging examination of the topic? Or any of several other possibilities. But continually redesigning the same material into different formats isn’t progress.
[...] Redesigning Content for Kindle : For the designer Kindle is a pain in the arse [...]
This represents mY thinking
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Collecting signed Ernest Hemingway books
In a recent trip, chatting with fellow-passengers about the books we carry, an Ohio schoolteacher denounced paper reading material as obsolete, and non-green. He only reads Kindle books and free newspapers on Internet (NYTimes was mentioned). His wife chimed in that library books spread germs.
All that made me sick, no fault of germs, and turn green (nothing personal, fellow environment cherishers). Old books have been part of my life, and libraries were my playgrounds. People collect old porcelain for its beauty and old paintings for their grace and history, and old books because that’s where knowledge resides. A New Yorker writer recently examined Kindle-available titles against his library and found very few meaningful authors electronically represented. A matter of time, you say? Eventually the libraries will be superfluous and un- necessary? Maybe, and so will be brains and thought processes, since all knowledge and opinions (qualified by polls or ayatollahs) will be retrievable from data bases and TV.
I admire books, old, particularly those signed, touched by the author. It is like shaking hands with the mind I admire. My particular mental puzzle is Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), a man with a consistent handwriting, easily recognizable and forgery prone. What was in his mind when he turned the gun on himself in lonely Ketchum, Idaho? Whenever I visit a rare book show, I study the copies of his titles. He seemingly inscribed many books to unidentifiable friends and casual way companions, but had only one , his best remembered book, A Farewell to Arms, published in a 510 copy limited signed first edition, encased in a tight box, guaranteed authentic .
Speaking of boxed limited signed editions as a whole, they are pernicious to the survival of the book in a pristine condition; taking the copy in and out is destructive of the vellum or cloth spine. I never dare to do it without permission, for fear of making an inadvertent perilous move.
Speaking as a collector, of the 510 Hemingway’s 1929 first edition Farewell to Arms limited signed copies only a few have survived in fair condition, and only one in pristine condition, with the box fully complete, an important point. It is for sale at Glenn Horowitz’s book emporium in New York. I have wondered whether the book’s condition survived because the owner broke the edges of the pristine box and restored them more loosely, to gain access to his own treasure without damaging it. (Glenn Horowitz, incidentally, is an internationally known dealer who finds homes for Presidents’ and authors’ personal collections, accessible by appointment).
Alas, the pleasures of collecting treasures are scary in a recession environment. People are looking for values that will resist the inflation lurking around the corner that certain economists warn us about. I have a neighbor who talks of relying on gold, incessantly, in elevators and in the building lobby. Old paintings and porcelain are part of the thinking; many modern pieces of art have not been time-tested, and some of the most avant-garde ones are made of organic materials that deteriorate, and should really come with a restorer’s guarantee, essentially an insurance policy. I will stick with the old values, old books from the 1600s and 1900s are surviving pretty well.