Maybe part of the problem is that most e-books aficionados at this stage seem to feel that book design, layout, and typography are irrelevant in an e-book world. They say, “Those are things best left to the user to control.” Of course, for years we’ve heard the same argument applied to Web sites. And, yet, there are many books about Web site design. There’s even a very good book on Mobile Web Design.

Perhaps there should be a book on mobile e-book design. Or, does e-book design really differ that much from Web site design?

Let’s examine some of the assumptions and concepts guiding the current incarnation of e-books for mobile devices.

The User Selects

This is what some call the “leave it to the reader” approach. The philosophy that the reader knows best what works for his eyes with regards to control of font size, typefaces, etc. Of course, good Web design allows a reader to increase text size to a certain extent but Web designers provide a starting point by selecting typefaces & font size that form part of a site’s specific design.

And there’s CSS

When knowledgeable e-book enthusiasts are asked about design limitations with regards to the emerging e-book standard, ePub, there’s invariably the glowing statement, “But you can use CSS to format the e-book as you desire.” ….the sound of tires screeching…. Anyone who has used CSS extensively can tell you that CSS can be a complex and challenging beast, particularly in the ways that different browsers support CSS. Will that be any different with the variety of mobile e-book devices? Heck, even Kindle doesn’t support ePub. And do all ePub devices behave the same with regards to display?

CSS does allow for remarkable functionality and I’m a great fan of CSS, though certainly no master of CSS. (Actually, I think there’s only a hundred or so CSS masters in existence on this planet.) I enjoy working with CSS, and it might be fun to play around and see just how far we can take e-book design in a direction that provides a great reading experience for the user. But that also takes a lot of work, which leads to the next topic.

The content conversion cost factor

There is a cost factor for publishers to convert content into an e-book format for mobile devices. Incidentally, it must be noted that there is not a cost factor for converting content into PDF since (for most publishers) PDF is already a by-product of the book design process. That’s an important factor and something that we’ll revisit later.

Certainly an e-book can be created without a lot of fuss, but how good does it really look? And does that really matter? After all, I remember in the mid-1990s that there were people who preferred surfing the Web with their terminal-screen Lynx browsers. There are always many people who are happy with whatever.

But there are many people who want their books (even their e-books) to look great. That’s an important factor to these readers. Some e-book fanatics will say that those people just need to get over their nostalgia for print and get on with the times. But the people who care about the look-and-feel of books are also people who buy a lot of books. That’s a market segment that publishers might care a lot about.

So how do publishers cost-effectively convert into formats both acceptable to Kindle (which can’t be ignored) and other e-book reading devices?

Is this 1993?

At this stage of the e-book technology life cycle (and I think we’re still in the early years of these products), perhaps publishers can just convert to an acceptable e-book format for books that are text only and realize that further conversions will be necessary down the road.

Can someone point me to a Web site from 1993 that is still available? Well, here’s a Web site I created in 1993.

You know what? I bet that site might look really good on some of these small, portable devices that we’re using for reading e-books today.

What about e-books in 2023?

Web site design has come a long way in 15 years. So has technology. In 1993 I remember that one of my colleagues had an Apple Newton. He was so cool.

Only a fool would believe that today’s Kindle and similar devices for reading e-books will not change significantly over the next 15 years. What will e-books and reading devices be like in 2023? No one really knows but there are bound to be some exciting developments with both e-ink and display screens that will further revolutionize the way that we read e-books.

What happens when…

What happens when there is a tablet-sized display supporting e-ink? Or, when mini-notebook computers with tablet screens reach a low-cost point? Or perhaps even flexible tablet-sized e-ink screens? Technological advances might very well surpass today’s limitations.

Tablet size…. What would happen to the e-book market if a thin, light-weight tablet device (either e-ink or LCD display) with a 12″ screen became affordable? Is this likely by 2023? Is anyone betting against it?

When type of device comes onto the market, it will truly revolutionize digital publishing.

But if you have a reading device with such a large screen, then do you need an e-book format that is based on reflow? Or, will that old by-product of print publishing – PDF with all its advanced layout that retains the “high fidelity” of a printed book – be the most common format for e-books? Which format will be chosen by people who buy a lot of books?

Likewise, such a device will change the way people read other materials, especially Web sites, and offer new opportunities for re-crafting what we now call a book. In this scenario, a book is no different than a Web site. And book design is no different than Web site design.

But monetizing a Web site is difficult and publishers certainly yet haven’t figured out how to package and monetize content as Web site, so that’s a big challenge for publishers. But with the prevalence of large-screen e-book reading devices that can support PDF, then many publishers can happily remain in the book selling business even when most books are digital.

Of course, there will always be some people who prefer to read only on a smaller device. That market will not go away, but if the Kindle of 2023 has a color 12″ screen….

Of course, by that time, perhaps Amazon will have bought Sony or some other hardware manufacturer and the Kindle has morphed into a general purpose, always wireless, portable PC.

All this effort today…

Technology forecasting is always prone to errors and everyone knows that you really can’t plan for more than two or three years out (and often not that). But technology management is a lot about strategy.

Getting books into a standard XML-based format such as ePub might be a good strategy for certain publishers. For other publishers, I’m not so sure. And I say that based on years of experience in working with markup languages, going back to the days of SGML. This post already has gotten too long, so I’ll address those issues in another post as well as further examining some of the topics covered here.

Don’t get me wrong…I have nothing against today’s generation of e-book reading devices. But that’s not the entire future of e-books.

I’ve certainly not read the whole thing, which comes out to hundreds of pages. But what’s troubling me about the whole thing continues to be that access to the digitized material within Google Book Search is restricted outside the U.S.; even though many countries have much less restrictive copyright laws than the U.S., Google seemingly throws up a blanket wall denying access to non-U.S. users to full content. The cumbersome solution is to go through a proxy server that mimics a U.S. IP address.

Google already considers any book published before 1923 as out of copyright and offers a PDF download of those books. But that PDF download link of pre-1923 titles is magically hidden if you access Google Book Search from many (most? all?) countries outside the United States. I know that is true for Argentina (despite copyright in Argentina only extends 50 years after the death of the author) and I’ve read that access is not available in Australia. There must be many more countries in this list.

With the new copyright settlement, Google will make available access to books still in copyright but out-of-print. As a former librarian, I applaud that strategy. (Publishers have a legitimate concern, but – really – publishers should have been out in front of digital access to out-of-print titles much earlier anyway.) Google will provide subscription-based institutional access to this resource (which I suspect will cost a pretty penny) and individuals can purchase the rights to access the books online.

The section of the agreement titled Other Potential Commercial Uses offers insight into future, and it looks to be a very bright future:

In the future, Google and the Registry may agree to develop other Access Uses, including consumer subscriptions (similar in concept to the institutional subscriptions); print on demand Books; custom publishing (per-page pricing of content for course packets or other forms of custom publishing for the educational and professional markets); PDF downloads (consumers would be able to download a PDF version of a Book); and summaries, abstracts or compilations of Books. Rightsholders will be notified, either directly or through the Registry’s website, of all new commercial uses that Google is authorized to make, and will have an opportunity at any time to exclude their Books from any or all of these uses.

It’s unclear to me whether any of this will be accessible to international users. I fear that it may not, particularly since even now not even public domain books are accessible everywhere via Google Book Search outside the U.S.

A serious need

There is a serious need, particularly in developing countries, for access to information – especially scholarly books and research. Already, an enormous amounts of research material and scholarship is cut off from the most of the world. Online access to books – whether for free or fee – is a significant need for readers in every country. If Google can’t make that happen, then individual publishers need to do so.

Meanwhile, those of us down here in the Southern Cone and elsewhere will continue to hunt for U.S.-based proxy servers to access that restricted content. But that only works for those of us with the technological wits to do so.

If I want to learn more about a classic text while using a computing device, then I would really prefer for the material to be presented in a way that leverages multimedia rather than simply reading more and more text. Sell me an e-book that includes extensive commentary in audio, video, and with superb graphic renderings related to the book’s content and I will gladly pay $20 or more (perhaps a lot more, depending upon content) for that title.

Penguin’s enhanced e-books are designed around the limitations of today’s e-book reading devices. All of us who work with technology know that this is a rapidly moving target and that these devices will evolve significantly over the next few years. And, also, there’s already an intriguing device that many people are very excited about that currently can support these truly enhanced, e-books: it’s called a computer.

How to develop the enhanced content for e-books?

Creating this advanced level of supplementary content is a very complex (and expensive) production. (Then again, simply publishing a book is itself already a complex and expensive production of editing, layout, printing, etc.; publishers already have a lot of expertise in efficient content development that can be utilized for these tasks.)

However, an option for publishers that don’t want to create this material in-house is to partner with universities to produce digital content. Universities are filled with academic specialists on every topic along with librarians, digital media specialists, and professionals who really understand how to use technology to enhance learning. And, after all, isn’t reading closely related to learning?

Publishers can provide grants to universities for producing the enhanced digital content. In turn, the enhanced e-books can be licensed for free use by academic institutions while publishers recoup the costs by selling the enhanced e-books to the public.

Of course, universities should already be developing such content as part of their own digital scholarship initiatives. When I was directing the digital library initiatives at the University of Miami, I formed a series of projects that provided funding to faculty for producing digital content. That was several years ago now, and things in academia move slowly (perhaps almost as slowly as in publishing!)

There’s actually a great opportunity here for university presses, which should – but seemingly seldom – be closely coordinated with digital media specialists at their universities. Indeed, there’s no reason why universities – which are always looking for new revenue sources – to be producing such enhanced versions of classic titles already in the public domain.

Then again, there might be entirely new firms specializing in enhanced content for digital media publishing that will emerge, either selling the fully enhanced e-books to the public or licensing the material to other publishers.

A significant problem I see with the current debate on e-books is that it views books as being only text. Don’t let the limitations of today’s Kindle and other e-book readers determine the future of e-books.

Again, a reference to my librarian days: I was fond of saying that in the future we will stop referring to digital libraries as digital libraries but instead someday just call them libraries. Likewise, someday we will stop referring to digital books as e-books and simply call them books.

In a post titled on text taking precedence, she writes

Moving to a text-takes-precedence model, where design gives way to an XML style sheet and printing is offered only on demand and serves just to hold the book together, means we have to focus on content and use and search, not aesthetics.

This reminds me a lot of my days in academic libraries. But over the last few years I’ve come to a rather opposite conclusion. For 15 years I specialized in digital libraries, which primarily is focused on content and search retrieval.

After a move to South America I got involved with book design. For so long I tried to convince myself that the text-takes-precedence model had to work since, after all, that was the basis of everything I valued in developing digital libraries. But I always felt that something was missing and that was largely the aesthetics of digital content.

Most people involved in developing digital libraries and scholarly publishing are programmers, project managers, and administrators. Occasionally, someone in that crew will have learned a few things about Photoshop and labeled himself a graphic designer.

(And I will be the first to admit that I am no graphic designer but I do work with one).

If the future of publishing scholarly monographs is to store the content in XML and generate end-products in various formats via styles sheets, then it’s imperative that those involved in scholarly publishing connect with those who can bring quality design to those style sheets.

These days there are a ton of professional designers well versed in crafting great designs with style sheets. It can be done and it’s vital that individuals within the scholarly community don’t let programmers and administrators convince them that aesthetics does not matter.

Joe Wikert posted an interview with Jeff Gomez, author of Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age that raises several good points including a future where the notion of what it means to be published is going to change. Gomez says, “The Internet is the best thing that has ever happened to the midlist author.”

Then I saw a comment to Joe’s interview where someone said, “who ever made money selling fiction on the web? (Nobody, that’s who)”.

What are some ways in which the fiction writer can leverage the Web in order to support a life of writing?

I’ve been thinking that a writer could earn a sustainable income by direct sales to loyal readers, either through books – digital downloads or POD – or even through a membership site.

Membership? Have a favorite writer? Not a lot of writers get very far in their blogging because – I suspect – they feel that blogging takes away from their real writing. But many writers craft essays, columns, and stories for publication. What if the author’s own membership site became an outlet for that creative content?

As an avid reader and follower of contemporary fiction I would gladly pay $50 a year (possibly more) for access to writings by my favorite writer. Make that writers. There’s certainly a limit on the number of writers I would support with an annual contribution but I spend a lot of money on books anyway.

How many loyal fans does it take for the writer to earn a sustainable income, either through selling direct or opting for some type of membership site? Do the math.

Keven Kelly writes

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

It’s not a matter of if but when writers will break away from publishers and go independent.

It has not yet happened because most fiction writers are not net savvy or entrepreneurial.

Not just for loyal fans:

A writer also could use online products, either free digital downloads, or a membership site to attract new readers. For instance, I’ve recently developed an interest in Will Self. Since it’s not so easy for me to get his books down here in Buenos Aires, I would consider subscribing on a trial basis to get access to more of his writings, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. Then I might be converted into a loyal fan.

A team is needed:

Of course, most writers are not going to be able to handle the slightest technical aspects of implementing such an online campaign, though a few will do so. And writers always will need editors and designers (your online site has to look good if you’re asking people to give you money). But there are plenty of ways to contract with those professionals. In the future publishers will need to shift towards providing that type of team to writers and managing an author’s online presence. If publishers don’t, then others will step in and do so.

I have many more thoughts on this topic but for now you should go read 1,000 True Fans.

When I saw today over at Slush Pile that Beautiful Children, the new novel by Charles Bock, was available through tomorrow February 29, I decided to grab the e-book even though I had absolutely no idea what the novel was about.

I also checked out the author’s stylish and intriguing Web site.

But I couldn’t really figure out what the book was about from the author’s Web site, so I went to Amazon to read the description.

On doing a bit of research for this post, I see that I must have fallen behind in my literary review sources and lit blogs since everyone is remarking that this book has been reviewed pretty much everywhere. Just goes to show that the word free must get my attention more than anything else! Or, maybe I’ve seen the review but just hadn’t paid any attention to it. I don’t know, which also goes to show that this free download helps to make a book memorable. But, what if there were hundreds of titles this week being offered for a limited free download by publishers all across the net? Is this an innovative twist to publishing or a publicity tactic? Either way, I think it’s a good move.

Question to self: Why have I not had The Millions in my Bloglines before today?

On doing a title search on “Beautiful Children”, Amazon returned a prominent display highlighting the free download:

E-book downloads, whether free or at a price, are particularly good for someone like me who lives at the edge of the world, as I’ve previously mentioned on this blog.

A recurring questions: how does someone become aware that a new title is available for download for a limited period? Diligently monitoring the media & lit blogs for announcements? And why does the Random House news announcement page still not have an RSS feed?

Everyone in publishing should review the 2008 Digital Outlook Report from Avenue A/Razorfish, a firm with extensive experience in interactive media. (Or, skip the registration and grab a copy from here).

A clean design makes shuffling through the 164 page document an ease. Relevance abounds but I want to focus on one issue, point 4 of the “4 questions that should keep creative people up at night“:

Narrative is the experience. As the Web becomes the preferred destination for brand exploration, digital experiences must become richer, deeper, and more able to tell compelling stories. If your brand experience depends entirely on pages and clicks, it’s time to wonder, “What is my story?”

Is there a story here? Are we designing a page or an experience? What is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the brand story we are creating? Does it move—and are people moved by it?

[Let's set aside the vested interest of Avenue A/Razorfish in encouraging their clients to invest in more complex and costly Web development.]

The stumbling block is often the revenue factor, trying to figure out how to monetize digital information. Of course, the most obvious way is to use the net as a platform for selling your product. Other industries don’t seem to have the problem in understanding that Web experiences fuel sales of physical products.

Tremendous potential exist in creating engaging author Web sites that pull potential readers into the book’s narrative, thereby promoting sales of the book.

That’s why I abhor those sites that provide a generic one-size-fits-all approach to every author.

And before you say it: just because you don’t want to cuddle up in bed with an e-book, don’t assume, don’t assert, that others share that attitude.

Wide acceptance of e-books largely depends upon functional reading devices but limited distribution of printed books is an even larger issue. Sure, print-on-demand offers a solution but what happens when the quality of e-books are better and more affordable and more accessible than books printed on demand?

I already live in a part of the world where 95% of the English-languages books I want to read are not easily available. That scenario, the lack of printed reading material, really adjusts your perspective about e-books. (Meanwhile, fortunately, I am surrounded by a wealth of Spanish-language books). But I still feel the necessity of an e-book reader. Unfortunately, international shipping to Argentina is not reliable and there’s a huge import tax on electronics. So, my e-book reader will have to wait until some future visit to North America.

What is the future of book design in an e-book world? Very healthy.

Book design, layout, and typography will continue to play the same role in producing e-books as in printed books. Indeed, one could argue that readability may be an even more important factor with e-books. New possibilities with layout and presentation also may be presented through e-book readers. Of course, there will be limitations and some books just will not be as presentable through e-book readers as in their printed counterparts. Essentially, book designers already produce every printed book as an e-book anyway. In all cases, the final production files delivered to the printer are digital files and almost always in PDF. So, there is still plenty need for book designers in an e-book world.

What about book cover design? Very healthy.

The cover image will continue to play an important marketing role in helping people select which e-books to read. Just as with printed books, e-books need some way of standing out in the crowd.

And what about printed books in an e-book world?

People will still want to buy books, but my thinking is that people will be more interested in spending money on specialized books, books not available digitally, books that offer an experience, books that involve a high degree of design.

So, we may be book designers but that doesn’t mean we’re traditionalists. Of course, in a sense, book design is not so much about the book but about the ways that text and images are conveyed to the reader.

Like all blogs my own now has an extensive archive. Whenever I come across a new blog I read the latest postings and, if I like those, I add the site to my news reader. I always intend to go back and browse the archived postings but I rarely do so. Figuring that a lot of visitors to my site also never make it too far into the archives, I decided to pull together a selection of postings from my archives and create a free e-book. It was a challenge to distill so much material down to 50 pages, which is the length I had in mind. I ended up with 57 pages.

So, I’ve taken my blog and made an e-book. What’s next?

In my blog’s archives I have enough text that could be converted to approximately 175 more pages. With some editing and arrangement there is certainly more than enough material to produce an insightful book on Buenos Aires. But no one wants to read a 225 page e-book. I certainly don’t (unless I have a nifty e-book reader) and am not intending to release a PDF like that (and definitely not for free).

There’s always the self-publishing route and a lot of our clients here at sorodesign take that approach. I know enough about self-publishing that it wouldn’t be difficult to produce some sales directly from blog.

I was just calculating the year-end stats of my blog for 2007 and it amounts to about 80,000 unique visitors a year coming to my blog on Buenos Aires. Argentina’s weak economy has resulted in a tourism boom so I’m always getting a lot of new readers to the blog seeking out things to do in Buenos Aires.

My inclination is to query literary agents and see what type of response I get. I’ll post updates on this blog about my own success or failure in going from blog to book.

BTW, Cecilia did the page layout for the e-book and she will be posting later about the actual layout.

I didn’t think much about Picador’s new publishing plans until I was browsing the bookstores on Avenida Santa Fe this weekend and noticed that Coetzee’s latest novel, Diary of a Bad Year, is already out in the stores here in Buenos Aires and in paperback.

Most literary fiction in Argentina already debuts in soft cover. I assume that’s true for all the Spanish-language market. No one here seems to mind and the price is certainly lower than a hardcover equivalent. Essentially, in the Buenos Aires bookstores you only see literary hardcover for collector editions.

Prices for one reason

Diario de un Mal Año retails in Buenos Aires for 35 pesos, which is just over $11 US dollars. In the UK the hard cover is £16.99 and in the U.S. the book is a whopping $25.95! (And in the U.S. the novel isn’t even published yet).

Sometimes I complain about the price of books in Buenos Aires but in comparison 35 pesos is a great deal. But, hey, since Coetzee (one of my favorite authors) writes in English I’m going to wait for the English version, which will arrive with UK pricing converted to pesos – sigh.

But if publishers and readers of Spanish can deal with literary fiction coming out only in softcover, then why can’t UK and US publishers and readers?

Uh, about that cover

In another view to this topic: publishers of books in Spanish save a lot of money by ripping off cover designs from the UK. (Note that this Spanish edition of Coetzee is published by Mondadori, the huge Italian publisher.) Here’s the Spanish version:

Compare that to the UK version:

Now, compare that to the U.S. version, which is quite different and we find quite lovely.

We like the UK version but prefer the U.S. version. The Spanish version is just an embarrassment, though it’s much better than a lot of book covers I see on the shelves of Buenos Aires bookstores. Note even the poor use of type in the Spanish version when compared to the UK version. Of course, it’s likely that Mondadori paid very little for the Spanish cover, probably 1/10 of the design fee charged for either the U.S or UK covers. For Spanish-language publishers, cover design is just not important – unfortunately.