Actor, comedian and author, Amy Sedaris is Sony’s ambassador in its venture into the world’s next frontier of digital media: the book. In her ad on Sony’s web site Sedaris jokingly says, “People always are asking me: Amy Sedaris, how is it that you’re so amazingly well read? And I say first of all it’s true, thank you very much. But I like to think that it’s because my reader touch edition.” Which begs the question: How long have “reader touch editions” been around?

As a student at this University, you will run into a class that relies on WebVista and PDF versions of necessary texts. It’s expensive to print off a 19th century theatre critique when every page contains a picture of a set design or a frowning playwright. So you don’t print them off, and neither does your teacher. Instead you flip, zoom and scroll through the article on a computer screen. Books are going digital incrementally. Since the printing business is too profitable, and the devices are still, well, divisive. The transition into full digital literature is imminent yet progress is sluggish.

E-Ink

There are four major companies involved in the race towards a marketable digital reader: Sony, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple. There are ancillary products such as the Bookeen Cybook and the Interead COOL-ER. Three of the four frontrunners on the market rely on digital paper technology or E-Ink: the Sony Reader, the Amazon Kindle 2, and the Barnes and Noble Nook.

An M.I.T. scientist named Joseph Jacobson is responsible for developing the E-ink product, Vizplex. This screen is what all three of the aforementioned companies utilize in their readers. The technology involves two transparent electrodes that house millions of hair-sized capsules containing positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles floating in a “clear fluid.” When a site on the electrode becomes positively charged, the black particles move to the surface, creating a piece of a letter or a picture. When a site becomes negatively charged, white particles move to the surface to create the page’s negative space.

In the ads for their readers, all three companies emphasize the importance of E-Ink in creating a “natural reading experience.” The ad for the Barnes and Noble Nook claims, “It looks just like a printed page. There’s no glare or backlight, so I can read comfortably for hours.”

Comparisons

All of the Sony Readers use the E-Ink technology I have mentioned before. What sets Sony apart is the touch screen, which seems to allow for a more intuitive motion for turning pages. Both the Kindle 2 and the Nook use buttons to turn pages, but the Nook also has a touch screen on the bottom of the device that accesses the menu. The Nook’s menu allows the user to browse the library of dailies and books that s/he owns. It also allows for quick shopping and downloading through AT&T’s 3G network. Kindle 2 also has 3G capabilities but uses a clunky keyboard to search and navigate, while the Sony Reader uses a USB cord to import new content. They are all about the same size (6” diagonally) and all have the same text displaying capabilities (enlarging images, changing fonts, adjusting contrast, storage). Each of the three devices accesses a different online store to purchase titles. This means that a book bought from Sony’s E-Bookstore is not compatible with Kindle 2 formatting.

It is cheaper to buy a digitized book online than to purchase a physical copy, but of course this is without factoring in the cost of buying a device, which is set at $299 for both Kinldle 2 and Sony Reader Touch, while the Nook is priced at $259. Aside from their ad campaigns, not much is different from one device to another. Kindle’s ads target technology-illiterate seniors, the Sony Reader is for cynics who read their e-books in private (“but it’s so convenient”) and Nook is an iPod for books.

But Wait!

It turns out that the iPod touch and iPhone are both iPods for books. Both have “reader” capabilities with the Kindle application. The Kindle application provides the same service and the same library as the Kindle 2, but on a significantly smaller screen. Of course the iPod’s swiss-army knifelike convenience and its compact size will be enough for consumers to stray away from buying another specialized electronic device. The versatility of the Apple products definitely threatens the marketability of the “E-reader” revolution. With the iPod reading looks more like texting, which looks like checking your email, which looks like making a playlist, which looks like playing a video game and less like reading a medical chart from Star Trek. Also, Apple’s version of the Kindle comes with a backlight and a full color touch screen.

The iPod does not use the same E-Ink technology as its competitors, (who aren’t really competitors) so the iPod version of Moby Dick looks less “natural” than the Kindle 2 version (while “unnaturalness” is conceivably one of the top reasons why people show reluctance in investing in E-readers in the first place). The iProducts are also capable of accessing multiple databases, including Stanza, a database that is compatible with Sony Reader containing 1.25 million more books than the Amazon database.

Who Benefits

Princeton University was the first university to use e-readers in the classroom when they adopted the Kindle DX last May. According to an article by Hyung Lee, a Princeton student reporter for the Daily Princetonian, 50 students were given free Kindle DX’s (a bigger version of the Kindle 2 with an axis sensitive screen allowing wide screen viewing for viewing images) as a part of the university’s paper conserving initiative called “Toward Print-Less and Paper-Less Courses: Pilot Amazon Kindle Program” or TPLPLC:PAKP for the 2009-2010 school year. The Kindle got mixed reviews at Princeton where some students complained of the device’s lack of page numbers, its battery life, and primitive annotating capabilities. These problems made studying more difficult for some students, which seemed to outweigh the convenience of having all of their readings on the amiable little plastic tablet.

Am I Still Digital?

The simple answer is yes, but you’re waiting for a product to come, to save your back and your environment from the 569-year war that is analog duplication of the printed word. Yes, the printing business is still a highly wasteful industry, but until we find a sustainable, affordable, and sensible solution to the problem, people are going to continue to buy products that too quickly make their way into the garbage.

Perhaps in the future the “e-reader” will be seen as a failure from its inception. It’s the word. It suggests that something else is doing the reading for me. It’s the device that reads, not me. And I can’t have that. Maybe I’m too territorial about my reading. Ironically, I feel like saying what Amy Sedaris said perfectly at the end of her commercial for the Sony Reader: “When you touch great books, great books touch you back.”

Tags: dbook, death of the book, digitization, e-reader, ebook