Ptak Science Books has a fascinating post on The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss – it talks about how Dr. Seuss used just 236 different words to write The Cat in the Hat.
The first snippet worth considering contrasts the microscopic 236 words figure with the amount of words used in some other books -
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall seems to lead the way in the absolute number of different words used (43,113!!, which is astonishing), in the 1.5 million word text, while old Uncle Bill uses 4,842 words in the 32,000-word Hamlet—meaning that Measure for Measure (sorry) Mr. Gibbon out-Bills Bill, which I thought was very hard to do.
The snippet that really got me thinking was this one -
I think that it is impossible to calculate the overall impact of Seuss’ bringing young people to the joy of reading, and, actually, to the familiarization of kids with the bare mechanics of reading.
Perhaps it is the getting-the-kids-used –to-reading that was his most fantastic accomplishment—and something that few others have achieved, measuring by just pure numbers.
He’s got a point – Getting children into reading is pretty high up on the list of amazing things authors (and everyone else) ought to do.
What things would really help spread a love of books and reading?
There are so many things we could come up with – let’s start with some of the more obvious ones.
Finding the best authors and promoting and rewarding them
We need great authors to write great books and hopefully they’ll be able to take 70% (or at least 50%) of the sales.
It’s three simple things – making sure we identify the best authors, getting them in front of readers (and getting their books into readers’ hands), and making sure they get paid well (in money etc.).
The advent of eBooks and eReaders and the competition between Amazon and Apple have done a lot of this already – Publishers aren’t gatekeepers, Indie authors are beginning to make a name based on reviews and word of mouth, and you can now get 70% of sales from the Kindle Store and from the iPhone and iPad stores.
We’re actually doing exceptionally well on this front.
Creating excellent, polished books
This is a tricky one. The ones best suited for all the polishing and editing and quality control that goes into taking a book from good to great are Publishers. They, unfortunately, aren’t very happy that the barriers in publishing are coming down and that authors are begin offered 70%.
Which means we either find a way to get them happy with a 10% cut or we set up an alternate infrastructure that does what Publishers do.
eBooks are doing poorly in terms of editing and layouts and individual character and there isn’t much hope in sight.
Making it convenient to find and get good books
This is another area that has seen tremendous improvements. Now that Nook and Sony Reader Daily Edition have added wireless downloads we have all the major eReaders allowing users to browse for books and buy them from the eReader itself.
The bookstore is open all the time, it’s in your hands, it has immense range, and it delivers any book in 60 seconds.
Now all we need is a better recommendation system and better discoverability and we’ll be set.
Creating the best reading experience
This is a tough one. eInk faithfully reproduces ink on paper but it lacks color and struggles with note-taking and highlights. LCD has all the color and writing you could want but it’s far from ink on paper.
Unless eInk starts evolving faster or new, improved ePaper technologies emerge we won’t really see anything close to the best possible reading experience.
It would be great to get higher resolutions, better screen contrast, faster screen refreshes, auto-scrolling, color, touchscreens, better note-taking, and other advances. A lot of this is promised for the end of 2010 and who knows – we might actually see a miracle.
Letting people read anything, anywhere, and at any time
Reading options have exploded – in bright sunshine with your eReader, at the doctor’s office on your Kindle, in bed at night with a reading light and an eReader (or just the iPhone), on the PC at work, on your commute with your iPhone, while cooking using Kindle Text to Speech, on your plane – We can read books pretty much anywhere.
The battery life is spectacular so it really is reading entire books at a time.
The other related advantage is that we can carry our books with us wherever we go. It’s taking all your books with you and reading whatever you feel like reading.
Making children’s first experiences with reading pleasurable ones
It’s completely unreasonable to expect children to go through all these painful reading experiences – homework, assignments, reading in class in front of everyone, reading for exams – and still love reading. If it weren’t for parents reading books to kids and buying their kids good books the education system would turn all of us into book-hating TV-loving imbeciles. Perhaps that’s the plan.
We need to ensure that children get to see books in a good light - and that means giving them books that are fun and great and inculcate a love of reading.
Wikipedia’s write-up on the motivation for writing The Cat in the Hat is amazing -
Hersey was critical of school primers:
In the classroom boys and girls are confronted with books that have insipid illustrations depicting the slicked-up lives of other children. [Existing primers] feature abnormally courteous, unnaturally clean boys and girls. . . . In bookstores, anyone can buy brighter, livelier books featuring strange and wonderful animals and children who behave naturally, i.e., sometimes misbehave. Given incentive from school boards, publishers could do as well with primers.
Why should [school primers] not have pictures that widen rather than narrow the associative richness the children give to the words they illustrate — drawings like those of the wonderfully imaginative geniuses among children’s illustrators, Tenniel, Howard Pyle, “Theodor S. Geisel”.
Dr. Seuss responded to this “challenge,” and began work.
To think that this problem was recognized as far back as 1954 and we still haven’t found a good solution for it.
Reducing the price of books without devaluing them and without letting authors starve
It would be good to strike a balance between lowering prices and encouraging the spread of reading and keeping prices high enough to reward authors fairly. One easy way to do this is to cut out as many middle men as possible and give authors the majority of what readers are paying.
Both Amazon and Apple have taken great steps in this regard and it’s amazing to think we’ve improved author’s share from 8-15% to 70%. Even if an author hires a team to help him (or works with a reasonable Publisher) he can still get 50%. Instead of selling hardcover books for $25 authors can sell eBooks for $7 to $10.
Publishers might starve to death in this scenario – can’t see too many people shedding a tear over that.
Reaching people who couldn’t access books earlier
This is hugely important and it says a lot about Publishers that they are trying to limit this.
- With changeable font sizes eBooks and eReaders help people with low vision and kids with learning disabilities access books.
- With text to speech the Kindle (and soon the iPad) helps blind people access books easily.
- The light weight of the Kindle lets people with weak arms and wrists read books without stress.
- The Kindle’s expansion means people in 170 countries can access hundreds of thousands of books. The App Store also helps spread books all over the world.
- The overwhelming number of free public domain books means even people who don’t have much of a books budget get to read a lot of books.
eReaders are bringing reading and books to completely new audiences.
Using technology in reading and getting attention
eInk might not be the prettiest screen technology and it might not be evolving fast enough – It is still 21st century technology.
For the first time we have a lot of people writing about and talking about books (even if it is to attack books). Kindle vs iPad might be a completely pointless comparison – However, when was the last time a reading device was compared with Apple products?
Music got mp3 players and Movies got 3D screens and Books got nothing. Finally, books are seeing technology younger than our great great great grandfathers.
It’s also extremely helpful that there’s a big war going on for the future of books – Publishers vs eBooks, Kindle vs Sony, Apple vs Amazon, dedicated eReaders vs do-everything devices. There’s lots and lots of buzz and all of it helps books and reading.
Using technology around reading
The entire infrastructure around reading was archaic. Physical books shipped and stored and remaindered and companies surviving on models from centuries ago. It’s difficult to attract more readers when you’re struggling to stay alive yourself.
We suddenly have technology creeping into every aspect of reading – eReaders, websites, electronic books, and so many other little wins. It all adds up to a lot of progress. All the efficiencies add up and we get better prices for readers and a better cut for authors.
Reducing the amount of friction and regret around reading books and buying books
We get to eliminate negatives and make things super convenient for users –
- Buy books in your pajamas.
- Buy books the instant you find out about them.
- Worried about people finding out what you’re reading? It’s no longer a problem.
- With $25 we know if we get it wrong we’ll really regret buying the book. With a $10 book (and a free sample we don’t have to go to the store for) it’s much less of an issue.
- Worrying about what books to take with you on vacation – Why not take them all?
- Tired of carrying around that heavy textbook – It’s much lighter in bits.
- Always lose your place in a book? We keep it for you.
Things are much, much simpler plus some of the reasons you might regret a purchase have been eliminated.
eReaders and eBooks are really good for reading
It’s amazing that Publishers are using the ‘sustenance of books’ argument to try to kill eBooks and eReaders.
There are a ton of ways in which eBooks and eReaders help spread the growth of reading and they also increase the amount of reading. They’re great for books and they’re great for anyone who loves books.
At some point even hardcore physical book addicts and publishers have to realize that we can’t fight guns with swords. Every other form of entertainment is using technology and improving the customer experience and making things easier and easier. Books have to step into the 21st century to survive and flourish.
Filed under: books Tagged: | future of books, future of reading
