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.

We’vet just finished the e-book guide 4 Perfect Days in Buenos Aires. It was a process full of questioning many things that are, should or could be different from printed books. (Another post will address why PDF and not some other format for this e-book.)
Here I’ll share some of the topics that we came across while working:

ORIENTATION: portrait or landscape?

By thinking that we are designing a ‘book’ the impulse is always to go with a known book format (portrait), but since the screen is landscape, it’d be useful to follow that format if the e-book is intended to be read on screen.
However, when we read a print book we are always looking at a landscape format from the moment we open the book: the double page. So finally, I decided to go landscape, but as double page to keep the book familiarity and avoid the feel of a PowerPoint presentation.

Should we use COLOR or B&W?

Should we do it full color? We can! So why not?

A full color e-book can be done for the same price and will be more attractive since it’s full of graphics… ok, let’s think about the audience: what if the people want to actually print it and take it with them? Remember this is a tourist guide!
WHAT TO DO? We decided to work on 2 versions: a screen version with images & full color for people to enjoy, read and look at while planning the trip; and a print version that is B&W with a simpler layout. So by printing 11 letter-size pages of the print version then the reader can have the complete text to go.
Here an example of the screen version and the print version:

One complicated part we encountered was a double page with an architectural walking tour that included buildings photos: in this case we just left the map in the print version with references (so people could find the buidings) without images and included the text of that section:

To keep the feel of the book, the print version has the same text orientation (landscape), so by slightly modifying the original grid it was ready:

TYPOGRAPHY: screen font or book font?

I wanted a font family that could be used for the whole project, including the print version. The Rotis family was the choice because of the maximum readability and many options to combine the different levels of hierarchies of headings and text. The main text is set in Rotis Sans Serif and the headings are Rotis Serif & Rotis Semi Serif.

With or without LINKS?

I find it useful when a multi-page document (e-book in this case) has anchors from the Table of Contents linking to the corresponding pages in the e-book. Also since this is an e-book all Web sites mentioned in the e-book are actual links embedded in the document.

COVER

To be consistent with the landscape look of the whole project, the cover was done in the same style, so when opening the document all the pages are the same size, including the cover.

Book design will diverge down several paths and has a surprisingly healthy future.

1) E-books based on a reflow format (i.e., suitable for small devices) will be based on common style sheets and exhibit a fairly uniform appearance. There will be a set of small (in size) firms that customize and refine these style sheets. Publishers will mostly outsource the format conversion since the ever changing variety of devices requires continual reformating of material. There will be some firms that profit very well from providing this service.

2) E-books based on PDFs also will be very popular due to the variety of light-weight computing devices with large screens. (The whole PDF vs reflow format for e-books is misleading unless one assumes that small, palm-sized devices will completely replace all other forms of desktop, notebook, and tablet-sized computers.)

3) Some material traditionally only published in book format will shift to Web delivery and “book” design for this genre actually is Web design. Many challenges for publishers in this segment who have not yet figured out how to monetize Web sites. (If publishers have not figured that out in the last 15 years, will the next 15 years be much different?) Many opportunities for new publishing firms to emerge to fill the gap for producing and monetizing engaging content using digital media. Many opportunities for designers since elegant Web design is neither simple nor cheap.

4) Print-on-demand establishes a significant market operating in bookstores, libraries, big-box retail outlets, and direct shipping to consumers. All those books still need designing and the PDF byproduct can feed directly into pathway #2 above as well as #1 with conversion services offered in pathway #1.

5) Print book designers will still flourish as some publishers will realize that a niche audience is willing to pay a premium for a wonderfully designed book, heralding a surprising renaissance in book design. Also, print book designers can design PDF-based e-books with no problem since PDF is usually a byproduct in the print book design process.

Regular readers will not that I continue to push back against the dire warnings that e-books will replace print books. My resistance comes not because I’m a bookman (which I’m not) but because sweeping, generalized statement leave out so much.

Everyone points to how cars replaced horse-drawn carriages, but there are so many examples where a new technology did not replace previous methods. Yes, e-books will shift print books, publishing, and booksellers in new directions but that doesn’t mean the eradication of print.

In the 1800s the public lecture was a popular and effective way to convey information. Radio did not entirely replace the gathering of individuals to hear someone speak. Cinema did not replace theater. DVD replaced VHS but not movie theaters. MP3s replaced CDs, cassettes, 8-tracks, & vinyl but none of that replace live concerts.

Moving-going, attending concerts and lectures: those are all communal activities but reading is not. In that way, reading is more akin to the solitary viewing of a movie at home or listening to music on an iPod. Yet, when we go to the movies, or sit through the performance of an opera, we process that experience in solitary ways, as individuals. Part of our sensory experience may feed from the audience (particularly at a rock concert) but much of our pleasure at enjoying movies in a theater or a classical concert stems from the environment of the theater and other perceptions. Who is not annoyed at that guy talking two rows over? (And, honestly, I do have to say that I can think of very few lectures that I have enjoyed in person. For that, please, please just give me the lecture on YouTube.)

There are ways that we interact with books through typography, design, and the format of print itself that are so successful that it’s practically transparent to most. For many books – and I don’t say all – print will remain the most effective medium because the book itself has a form that suits our senses.

In a decade or two from now, with advances in digital displays, this will certainly change but I still doubt that even by 2025 we will have seen the complete absence of print books. I know I must sound like a Luddite to all those who are convinced that everyone – right now – should be reading books on their iPhones.

What I do expect is that digital media will create new forms of interacting with a large body of textual and image-based material (the common ingredients of books), ways that go far beyond what we see with the current generation of e-book reading devices. Yet, the capabilities of rich Internet-based digital media have been with us for more than a decade now and, honestly, we’ve not seen a very significant shift towards utilizing this new media in creative and impactful ways. For that, I do blame academia and publishing. There’s a lot more that needs to be done and it will probably come about with the generation that was born into a world where digital media is not considered “new”.

We need to learn what it means to write with digital media.
We need to learn what it means to read a digital text that is not an e-facsimile of a book.

With all the interest over publishers producing e-books for mobile devices (ranging from Kindle, Sony’s e-book reader, cell phones, and other e-book readers) you would think that a publisher would have produced a book on designing e-books for mobile devices. But I can’t find one. Am I missing something?

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.