As specialists in book cover design, as well as page layout, we’ve long been on the fence about e-books (as incarnated in the form of Kindle & the like). But we’re jumping in and will soon offer e-book design as part of our core book design services.
We enter e-book design with great frustration, not out of any quaint allegiance to print but with annoyance that manufacturers of e-book reading devices don’t grasp that we are now in the third decade of the Web. The current technologies underlying the Web offer tremendous flexibility for crafting beautifully designed sites, incorporating a range of media already supported on multiple devices. Designing on the Web is technology-driven, and the technology is robust. On the Web (as in print) designers have the tools to create superb works, limited only by the skills of the designer.
We wish to create e-books with the tools at hand. Instead, Amazon and Sony (along with a mushrooming mass of imitators) are transporting us back to a stage of technology development that resembles the early 1990s. I was developing Web pages in 1993 and can’t help but experience flashbacks every time I dive into formatting an e-book for either Kindle or EPUB.
That’s no knock against format, either Kindle or even EPUB. These formats are essentially HTML & CSS (though a limited subset). My primary irritation is the way e-book reading devices render HTML & CSS and the corresponding ways that publishers think of e-books based on this model.
If an e-book (as defined by Kindle, EPUB, etc.) is basically a group of HTML pages styled with CSS and bundled for offline reading (with or without a DRM wrapper), then is it really so difficult to implement a rendering engine that supports HTML & CSS as we use it today on the Web?
Meanwhile, I’ll try to temper my moaning about the limitations of e-book devices, though I feel like I’ve been through this before.
In the early years of the Web, designers stayed on the sidelines. Sites were designed by programmers (myself included) or self-taught designers. Eventually, people who really understood graphic design and visual communications entered Web design, and we have a more beautiful online world. And that, too, will happen with e-books. And, someday, the people who really understand reading and writing in digital media will step in, freeing the e-book from its linear, text-oriented form, and helping us recognize that there’s more to offer than merely converting 300-page narratives to e-ink.
How long to wait? There’s a collective sense that the only hardware manufacturer who has ever understood design and the digital life (Apple) will snap us all out of our preoccupation with the current life form of e-books with a portable device that more fully supports the display of a bundled set of Web pages styled with CSS. We’ll see. Now, back to messing around with the Kindle.
[...] Barry on Soros Design Blog E-books and Re-inventing the Wheel Web “My primary irritation is the way e-book reading devices render HTML & CSS and the [...]
it sounds like you want narrative books to be something other than text. In the case of an encyclopedia, art or instructional book, design is essential, so yes, there is much room for improvement there code and device wise.
Where fiction, or narrative fiction is concerned I firmly believe that simplicity is key. Let the user modify the bare text to their liking, choosing the font, colour, size, background and justification.
If someone hopped into the designers seat with the intention of making my text only ebook “pretty” I wouldn’t hesitate in savagely beating them to death with my iPhone, adding an earbud strangulation for flair.
Oh god don’t bother with ePub.
http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/is-adobe-hindering-ebooks/
Learn iWork:
http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/apple-will-break-open-the-digital-book-floodgates/
@Randolph: I was thinking mostly of non-fiction narratives. With fiction, personally, I still prefer a typographer to format the text. Then again, I still prefer my fiction in print. But I also understand that others don’t. I just don’t want any publisher to force me to deal with bare text.
@Mike: I think you’re so right. That’s an interesting post about iWork.