Wearable Offers Mobile Books for the Blind

A new wrist device slated to debut this December is intended to help sight-impaired users read Braille versions of books and text messages while on the go.

The face of the Dot, which resembles a fitness tracker, features four sets of six raised dots. The dots lift or recede to form four Braille letters at a time. The device—which also functions as a watch, alarm, and navigation system with Bluetooth capabilities—can be used for five days before needing to be charged.

“Touchscreens are not conducive to the blind as they cannot see the shifting pixels on the smooth device,” said a Popular Science article about the Dot. “That has not only slowed down the technological literacy for the blind, but has also impaired their reading literacy, cutting them off from most information that isn’t published in print.”

The device was developed by a company based in South Korea, but most of its young design team are fairly recent graduates of U.S. universities. The company claims the Dot will retail for about $300, while Braille-enabled e-readers cost upwards of $2,000. The only other alternatives to Braille books—audio recordings and text-to-speech software—are either expensive to create or don’t always work properly.

One immediate drawback for the device is a lack of reading material. Only about 1% of published books have been converted into Braille, but the company hopes the availability of the Dot will encourage publishers to offer more titles in that format.

Books Go Multimedia to Lure Kid Readers

What were your favorite books as a child? Chances are, those same titles would earn bored yawns from many kids today. According to The Atlantic, some teachers and children’s publishers are experimenting with digital enhancements to hold the interest of elementary-school readers.

The term “reader” may not be entirely accurate. The Atlantic noted that some of these e-books are heavy on multimedia and light on text; some are actually interactive apps. Yet parents and their children are responding positively to them, while teachers and librarians report they’re having a hard time holding their classes’ attention with all-text books, no matter how popular the titles once were.

If children get used to multimedia entertainment in their reading books in grade school, they may expect the same when they get to college. In fact, they may not even be able to effectively study pages of text without digital enhancements. Two researchers at West Chester University “found that students tend to spend more time reading enhanced books, but that they often comprehend less of the material,” said The Atlantic article.

In some cases, publishers are putting digital extras into e-books just because they can—audio of noises in the story, for instance—and not to help young readers understand the book’s themes or learn new vocabulary. In others, though, the digital books and apps were intentionally created to be used in conjunction with print books as a means to extend the reading experience.

New University Redefines 'Library'

A few universities have converted their campus libraries into computing centers or study halls with Wi-Fi, but Florida Polytechnic University might be the first institution of higher education to be built with a bookless library from the start.

The newly constructed campus in Lakeland just opened for its first classes as part of the Florida State University system. The library services area housed in the Innovation, Science, and Technology Building does provide access to 135,000 titles, according to the Los Angeles Times, but they’re all digital. There are no print books at all in the library.

The library does have printers available. It’s also possible for Polytechnic students to arrange to borrow a hardcover book from another Florida State campus through interlibrary loans. However, students will be discouraged from doing either.

“Instead, the staff hopes students will organize their research online with tools that are part of the library service,” the article said.

On the school’s home page, the link labeled “Library” takes students to a page inviting them to “create your personal Florida Poly library.”

iPad Is Not Killing the Printed Book

A Simba Information study reported that while one in five U.S. adults own an Apple iPad, only about half use the device as an e-reader. Simba, which has been following e-book publishing and reading devices since 2009, also found that tablets have been gaining on dedicated e-readers for the last 18 months.

However, the findings do not support the idea that tablets will replace the printed book, according to Michael Norris, senior analyst at Simba.

“There are certain things about print that are incredibly valuable to consumers,” Norris told TeleRead. “I have a book on my shelf at home that is nine decades old. It was published by Popular Mechanics in 1919, I think. It will work when I open it up. Print books are something you can pass on and give as gifts. That is something where the physical book has had a big strength.”

Norris also advocated finding ways for print and digital to work together. He suggested placing a tracking code on the spine of a book that, when scanned, could provide sales information for the audio or e-book versions of the book and lead the reader back to the bricks-and-mortar retailer that originally made the book sale.

“Say you’re standing across the train platform from someone who’s reading a book your interested in,” Norris said. “You could just scan the spine. Not only does the publisher continue to bring in revenue, but so does the physical retailer associated with that book.”

Wiley Publishing's Interactive E-book

Wiley releases new interactive mobile app for the perennial bestseller “The Leadership Challenge.”   The new app called, “The Leadership Challenge Mobile Leader Tool,” allows for daily interactivity for those who use the book as a guide for building good leadership skills.  The interactivity involves things like feedback process to tract and measure performance, practice routines, and inspirational quotes of the day among other tools.  Wiley and apps such as this are setting the ground work for the future of e-books where readers can engage with the content of the book more intimately. 

Charming Video Promoting Traditional Books

Here’s a very adorable book trailer video for a short film based on Lane Smith’s “It’s a Book,” a very cute picture book for kids that promotes traditional books.  The video is an exchange between a book loving monkey and a techno donkey.

We came across this video in this article titled “Charmed by Books” published in the Chronicle.  This article is about an experience that a faculty member had when she introduced her class to a collection of old books in the University of Iowa’s Special Collections library.  As first, she was concerned that her smartphone and laptop wielding students would not be as thrilled by old books as she was but after this exercise this is what she had to say:

“Now, I dismiss predictions of the death of the book.  My new certainty that books and reading will endure wasn’t brought about poring over academic tomes or analyzing libraries’ circulation statistics.  It’s a conviction that comes from 15 students, expressions of glee on their faces as they watched one of their members discover the wonders of Reinhart’s Star Wars papercraft.

This winter I've got the sort of warm satisfaction that stems from others' real interest in what matters most to us. My students, they've got books: one on order from Amazon; one in a young woman's head, hoping to make its way into print; and others that many read and loved this term, which they plan to share with the children they'll have someday. I've seen the future of the book. It's in our students' hands.”

Decline in Print Sales in 2011

Association of American Publishers’ report shows sales of print books dropped 18.6% between Q1-Q3 of 2011 in major trade categories, Publishers Weekly reports.  According to this article, while e-book sales climbed almost to 140% for 15 of the reporting houses, the jump did not offset the slow sales in the print segment.   The combined print and e-book sales fell 5.7%, less than the 8.6% overall drop at the end of the first half of 2011.

The First "Smartbook"

There is news that Atria Books plans to insert RFID chip in 1000 copies of the book THE IMPULSE ECONOMY: Understanding Mobile Shoppers and What Makes Them Buy, making it the first “smart book.”   The consumer's can tap their NFC enabled phone to the RFID sticker and the phone will automatically open the phone's mobile web browser on specific book-related content.

"Proximity marketing solutions like NFC will allow for seamless and frictionless interactive experience whether this is for interactive content on your phone or mobile wallet commerce opportunities," says Gary Schwartz, the author of THE IMPULSE ECONOMY. "This new breed of consumer is using the mobile phone in the physical store to select products, research purchases, and act on content."

Atria Books is an imprint of Simon & Schuster, a part of CBS Corporation.

Video: Next generation book

There is a new 6-minute video from TED of interest. It is Mike Matas from Push Pop Press introduces their first full-length interactive book for the iPad. The talk is entitled, "A Next Generation Digital Book." There are some interesting features and capabilities, that could have great implications for textbooks in the future.

Publishers Try to Come to Grips with Digital Challenge

Publishing executives painted a rather gloomy picture of their world at the first World E-Reading Congress recently in London. According to this article in paidContent UK, the printed book is in trouble and publishers just aren’t yet sure what to do with its digital counterpart.

“The entire publishing industry is going down the drain,” an executive from Siemens told the publishers in a sponsored address about a tablet publishing software service. While most attendees probably don’t actually believe that, they are trying to tell their stories in new ways through technology such as iPhone apps.

They want to learn from the painful lessons of the music industry, but also fear competition that ranges from self-publishing authors to e-tail giants such as Amazon, which recently launched its own publishing imprint for romance novels.

“We need to anticipate and create new business models that give consumers access when they want it,” said Victoria Barnsley, international CEO at HarperCollins.

Young Readers Starting to Become E-Readers

There have been a number of studies showing that college students continue to prefer using printed books when taking a class, including one from OnCampus Research. However, the OnCampus Research study also added it was a trend that may not last long as younger readers begin to get more familiar with using electronic readers.

Now, the New York Times is reporting that publishers are seeing increases in sales of children’s and young adult e-titles. The article provides details from both HarperCollins and St. Martin’s Press that show jumps in digital sales of young-adults e-books in just the first month of 2011.

One possible explanation for the increase is that price drops in the electronic devices made them attractive for younger readers last Christmas. The Times also suggests K-12 teachers may be getting reports that some K-12 teachers are beginning to allow leisure reading on the devices during homeroom or in English classes.

Predictions from the higher ed CIO

Inside Higher Education had a good article by Lev Gonick last week on the outlook for higher education IT in the next year. I have great respect for Lev among higher ed CIOs for his perspective and expertise on emerging technology and higher education, and some of his well-connected insights.

Among his list of trend predictions for higher ed IT in 2010 of interest to this blog are the pieces on both gaming and open content. However, most who follow this blog will probably appreciate the following trend prediction most:

(5) The E-Book Reader Grows up and Goes to Campus. 2009 marked the birth of the e-book reader in the university marketplace. The first set of entrants put the already nervous higher education (text)book market on notice. New business models, publishing models, revenue sharing strategies, and new models around intellectual property and the assigned ‘text’ for a course proliferated and served to dislodge the staid legacy economy for many universities. If buying second hand books online was not enough, the new e-book readers were perceived by some to disintermediate traditional providers of services and economic benefit in the college supply chain. In 2010 a whole new generation of e-book readers will emerge as the life cycle of innovation really takes off for this class of mobile smart pads. Dedicated, single purpose readers will be eclipsed this year by new, integrated platforms supporting new functionality, Web services, rich media, open application development environments, and a wide range of new experimental interface approaches. Publishers, bookstores, technology, and entertainment giants will all clamor to the market, marking a significant if not final shift from the traditional bound book toward fully repurposable content for learning, including traditional texts.

This is not the first quarter from which we have heard a similar prediction regarding e-readers and course materials. I would not expect a complete change in this space in 2010, but as Lev suggests, there are some powerful shifts at work here as we rapidly move from one generation, to the next, to be followed by yet another --all within a very compressed timeline. The potential for e-readers and e-textbooks in higher education has not missed the attention of college CIOs, publishers, new entrants, device manufacturers, or a myriad of other players (both new and established).

2010 could very well be the start of a new decade in more ways than one.

A definite date for digital textbooks...

Wondering when digital will finally take off for textbooks? Well, if inventory (i.e., availability of a digital version of a print book) is currently a barrier, that will soon be changing. California has passed legislation mandating that companies which sell textbooks to California universities must offer digital versions by 2020. Of course, most companies will be compliant with that requirement long before that deadline, but it does establish an end date for the problem.

What this means is that if you are a bookseller serving a college or university in the state of California you can expect that 100% of the print books you sell will have an alternative digital option available in less than a decade. It also means that if the content is available for California, it is likely going to be available in every other state as well. Therefore, if you are not currently getting experience selling, marketing, and delivering e-books, then you are probably already giving up market share, and will certainly do so in the future. If your store cannot offer digital, then your competitors will (and in some cases already are).

We now have a more definitive deadline: a decade at maximum. Waiting 9 years and 11 months to prepare would not be good business strategy. One could liken this to a tsunami, which may not be all that visible until it gets closer to shore. We may see warning signs, such as the tide pulling out to dramatic levels. Early warning beacons may go off. Waiting around on the beach to see what might happen next is probably not a good idea, no matter how sunny the sky may seem today. We have all the lessons from other industries around us which gives book retailers the best chance of survival in the face of digital. Relying on a future of just print does not serve our customers, and does not position a store for continued success. We have a decade at most before our tsunami hits -- and that is if you estimate VERY conservatively.

So, what are you doing to prepare for digital textbooks today? (Seriously, we would like to hear.)

Future predictions

MediaBistro’s Galleycat blog is featuring an interesting series of articles with predictions for the publishing industry in ten years. They posted predictions from Seth Godin, Richard Curtis, Mark Coker, Jane Dystel, Richard Nash and Scott Steinberg. A few interesting items are Richard Curtis’ prediction that college students will begin using tablet PCs this fall and by 2011 or 2012, tablets will replace laptops on campuses across the nation. Mark Coker believes that in ten years, 95% of all reading will be on screen and Seth Godin says,

“This is the decade when book publishing will (finally) be transformed from a business that chops down trees and puts returnable books into bookstores... into one that finds ideas, funds the writers that need it, and uses their (authors' and publishers') leverage and skills to promote those ideas to people willing to pay for them, in whatever format is the most efficient way to get that transaction to occur. If that doesn't happen, and the industry (led by reactionary old-school CEOs) persists in defining itself as being in the book business, it will be 15% the size it is today by the end of the decade. It's our choice."

Gallycat also has a number of interesting posts about different e-readers and developments at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) out in Las Vegas. Such as their Video Tours of e-readers.

A question...

I had a conversation recently which bothered me on several levels. One of those levels will be the punchline to a talk I am giving later this week for ICBA. But at the moment, I am thinking about another question that has been rolling around in that apparently empty head of mine... I was recently asked if ebooks are a marketing solution to a problem for which there is no demand?

After giving this quite a bit of thought, I think this is in fact the wrong question. I think the question should be more something along the lines of "are current e-book solutions a poor substitute for what is really wanted?" After Henry Ford created the automobile, he reportedly quipped that if he had asked people what they really wanted, they would have said faster horses. There is another quote, who's author I do not know, that goes something like, lightbulbs did not result from the continuous improvement of candles. In other words, sometimes breakthrough advances or radical changes in a space result in new technologies that are so different from what we remember, that they are hard to predict. But, when the right technology comes onto the scene, there can be a more or less rapid transition from the old technology to the new.

People may be skeptical of e-books, arguing that there is no market demand for such content or devices, yet look at the success of Stanza -- an e-reader application for the iPhone. At the TOC conference last week they reported that in less than seven months after their creation they had over 1.3 million downloads of their reader across 60 countries and had downloaded more than 5 million books in twelve languages. Not bad for a platform where the CEO of the company said not long ago that no one reads anymore. Maybe reading the "old way" has become like using candles before the lightbulb.

Any thoughts?

How literature is evolving in the digital age

An interesting article from Time magazine takes a look at how literature is evolving in the digital age. The article discusses a number of topics that factor into the change including the outdated business models that have guided the industry for years, the increasing popularity of self-publishing, and how for the first time in history, novels are becoming detached from the dollar with the rise of fan fiction websites that carry free novels written by amateurs. Additionally, the author provides his take on what the publishing future will look like. He explains,

"More books, written and read by more people, often for little or no money, circulating in a wild diversity of forms, both physical and electronic... If readers want to pay for the old-school premium package, they can get their literature the old-fashioned way: carefully selected and edited, and presented in a bespoke, art-directed paper package. But below that there will be a vast continuum of other options: quickie print-on-demand editions and electronic editions for digital devices, with a corresponding hierarchy of professional and amateur editorial selectiveness. (Unpaid amateur editors have already hit the world of fan fiction, where they're called beta readers.) The wide bottom of the pyramid will consist of a vast loamy layer of free, unedited, Web-only fiction, rated and ranked YouTube-style by the anonymous reading masses." He goes on to add that fiction will be, "Like fan fiction, it will be ravenously referential and intertextual in ways that will strain copyright law to the breaking point. Novels will get longer--electronic books aren't bound by physical constraints--and they'll be patchable and updatable, like software.

Recently we have begun to see some examples of publishers moving to pure e-formats for selected content and finding ways to monetize the new way of releasing fiction. In the future, we could see consumers shift away from content abundance and rely on respectable publishers to do the editing and presentation. In turn, this could drive publishers back to their core competence of editing and compiling information - leaving the delivery, formatting, and consumer choice of access to other companies and technologies.

Publishing industry in 2009

After conducting a year long study on digital publishing, industry analyst Steve Paxhia of The Gilbane Group has identified the top five trends that could affect the publishing industry in 2009. His predictions are in line with the trends that we have seen gaining ground in recent months. He predicts: an increase in custom product offerings especially in the educational textbook segment, an increase in print-on-demand capabilities due to cost effectiveness and progressing production quality, and an increase in the premium digital products offered by traditional publishers.

We look forward to the full report due out later this month titled, “Digital Platforms and Technologies for Book Publishers: Implementations Beyond eBook.”

E-books turning the page...

An article in the New York Times Technology section this week reports that sales of e-books via e-reader devices are on the rise. Among others, some interesting quotes from the piece:

For a decade, consumers mostly ignored electronic book devices, which were often hard to use and offered few popular items to read. But this year ... the e-book has started to take hold.

The perception is that e-books have been around for 10 years and haven’t done anything ... But it’s happening now. This is really starting to take off.

And as we come close to the end of 2008, these quotes are significant ones. The article provides many other examples and provides a good summary of e-books across the spectrum of devices, and some sampling of sales trends. The message seems to be that e-books are coming close to jumping the adoption chasm and are on the verge of becoming more mainstream. Booksellers that are not thinking about how to sell content in an increasingly digital world may find themselves less and less the "go-to-first" option for readers.

The End of Books...

A totally engrossing article appeared last week in New York Magazine. The article was entitled simply, "The End," and discussed changes underway in the book publishing business. The opening of the article was fascinating, though. It began with a recent visit to a new startup within HarperCollins. Here is a short excerpt:

But first, a horror story. Debbie Stier, Miller’s No. 2 at HarperStudio (as this little imprint is called), has been collecting videos for their blog. “You want to see what happens to books after they go to book heaven?” she asks. On the screen of her MacBook, a giant steel shredder disgorges a ragged mess of paper and cardboard onto a conveyor belt. This is the fate of up to 25 percent of the product churned out by New York’s publishing machine. Everyone’s eyes widen, as though watching some viral YouTube gross-out. “It’s like Wall-E,” says marketing director Sarah Burningham. “It’s depressing,” Miller adds. They had sent in a flip camera with a warehouse worker. “You can see our books go through there,” says Stier. "The Crichton, the Ann Patchett.”

I would love to see that video. I tried to find a link to their blog, but was not successful in the few minutes I had this morning. The greatest or perhaps saddest quote comes from Stier's 12-year old son, when asked for birght ideas to save publishing he comments: “So maybe you have to turn all the books into movies so nobody has to waste their time.”

The article is quite long, but has some fascinating history, alongside some contemporary challenges and discussions. Midpoint in the article is an interesting discussion of how "traditional marketing is useless" that has some good lessons, or at least items to ponder. There is also some interesting analysis and insight into how Amazon works with the publishers, and what that might mean for both publishers and bookstores. Some quotes near the end could easily be modified to fit the bookstore industry. It allowed the article to end with a start as engrossing as the beginning:

But going back in time isn’t an option. A hundred Bennett Cerfs wouldn’t save the current publishing model—not without a hundred Bob Millers puzzling out the way forward, unhampered by fear or complacency. The kind of targeted, curated lists editors would love to publish will work even better in an electronic, niche-driven world, if only the innovators can get them there. Those owners who are genuinely interested in the industry’s long-term survival would do well to hire scrappy entrepreneurs at every level, people who think like underdogs.

It’ll be rough going in the meantime; some publishers will transform, some will muddle through, some will die. And there will, no doubt, be a lot of editors for whom even this diminished era will look like the last great golden age, when some writers were paid in the millions, some of their books produced in the millions, and more than half of those books actually sold. Book publishing is still a big-league business, and that’s a hard thing to let go of. “There’s something terrible,” says an editor at a prestigious imprint, “about admitting that you’re not a mass medium.”

Wow. It is like looking in a mirror and not liking what one sees, but being too engrossed to turn away. I thought the article provided a good read and some things to think about -- which is what all good reading should do.

CSI: Future of reading?

There is an interesting blurb in last Friday's Shelf Awareness. It notes:

CSI: Publishing Industry. Anthony Zuiker, creator of the numerous CSI television series, "has made a seven-figure deal with Dutton to create a series of three suspense-thriller 'digital novels,'" according to Variety, which reported that the new enture "is a publishing hybrid that broadens traditional book reading into a multiplatform experience that includes filmed components and an interactive social networking site.""I want to give traditional crime novel readers a more immersive experience," Zuiker said, noting that the online features give "publishing a chance to catch up with the YouTube generation that has lost passion for reading.""I personally don't have the attention economy to read a 250-page crime novel from start to finish," he continued. "I realized that the way I'd like to consume a novel is to be rewarded every couple of chapters by seeing something visual that enhances the narrative."

A step closer to born digital. It sounds like a cool idea though -- perhaps something lke the way pictures work in printed books. Such interactive content or "digital book models" could be particularly useful in travel books. I have already seen some similar type of content appear in some of the health sciences. Perhaps the CSI textbook series in forensics is next???