A couple of ereader features I would like to see 2 comments
Just a few thoughts on a couple of features I would like to see on my ereaders.
eReader Pagination
As you know, Amazon recently added real page numbers to Kindle books. The former location-based system was controversial and was inadequate for use with digital textbooks or in cases where you needed to cite or reference specific page numbers. Not all Kindle books have the real page numbers yet, and for those that do you need to tap on the Menu button to display them. Until you tap on the Menu button Kindle ereaders display a progress bar showing the percentage of the book read.
The Kindle’s progress bar also contains another bit of information: there are tick marks to indicate chapters. While I’m not a fan of the Kobo eReaders’ chapter-centric method of pagination (a Kobo eReader will, for example, inform you that you are reading page 10 of chapter 2 rather than page 50 of the book), there does need to be some way of seeing where the chapters are.
When reading a dead-tree book it is easy to page through to see where the next chapter starts. This is not so convenient with an ereader. The end of a chapter is a natural place to pause one’s reading, so it is nice to be able to easily see how far you are from the next chapter break.
Okay, so I want actual page numbers and some sort of indication as to where the chapter breaks are. But there is something else I want that as far as I know is not a feature on any ereader, though I have seen some reading apps that do it automatically. I want to be able to hide the pagination.
I am always finding myself distracted by page numbering, whether it be in ebooks or pbooks. I constantly catch myself glancing down to see what page I’m on and how far along in the book I am. The more pressure I’m feeling from other books in my library that are waiting to be read the worse it is.
I used to think this was just me, but recently I was discussing ereading with a friend when, out of the blue, he mentioned that he wished that he could turn off the pagination so that he could just get lost in his book without constantly being reminded of his reading position.
So obviously I’m not alone in this — there are other readers out there who are distracted by the pagination. You will probably be infected too, now that I’ve brought it up.
By the way, my friend has worked for many years in film and television. He has worked primarily as a production manager, but has also found success as a writer, director and producer. It was interesting to hear from him how widespread Kindle use has become in the industry.
Script readers are probably the most obvious beneficiaries of ereading. These poor sods use to trudge off to their every weekend loaded down with satchels stuffed with 10-20 or more paper scripts to be read. Nowadays before leaving their offices they simply download the scripts to their Kindles and head out to their weekends with a bit more spring in their step. Cool!
Update: The pagination on the Kindle Touch is different than that on the other Kindle ereaders, even the new $79 Kindle, and I like it better. The progress bar has been removed and now there is a Loc number in the lower left corner and percentage read in the right. The real page number, if available, can be displayed by tapping the Menu button (not sure why Amazon does not just replace the Loc # with it). The font used for these is small and I find it very easy to ignore. Now if only we could get the pages remaining to the next chapter. . . .
Organizing Multiple eReader Libraries
Whether it be Collections, Categories, Book Shelves that you can create and name, or whatever the ereader manufacturer wants to call it — every ereader by now should have some way for you to categorize and organize your ebook library. There is no longer any excuse for this not to be a standard feature.
If I organize my library on one of my ereaders I would also like the ability to transfer that organizational framework to my other ereaders of the same brand. For example, if I organize all of my ebooks into Collections on my Kindle 3, I would like the ability to copy that library structure to my other Kindles as well rather than having to sit down with each Kindle and rebuild it over again.
There are a growing number of multi-Kindle families, and having multiple ereaders in a family tied to one account and sharing a common digital library will become increasingly commonplace as hardware prices continue to drop and ereaders become ubiquitous. Being able to organize the shared library into a basic series of categories that can be copied across all of the group’s ereaders and then tweaked by the individual users would be a useful feature.
This might be something that would best be done via the ereader’s related desktop app (or better yet the Manage My Kindle page at Amazon) rather than on the ereader itself. I know that I have many ebooks in my library of indeterminate genre that I would have to research to figure out where to place. This would be easier and faster on my desktop, and when I have the library structure worked out I could just plug each Kindle in and transfer it over the USB.
With ebooks it is very easy and probably inevitable to amass a huge virtual library — a much larger collection than most of us could ever hope to build in paper. We need better ways to keep track of it all without having to invest huge amounts of time — time that could be better spent reading.
Update: I realize that you can manage categories and collections with Calibre, but I would like to see Amazon develop this feature for those of us who like to leave our libraries in the cloud rather than downloading all of our ebooks to our hard drives.
Amazon does store your collections in your Kindle archive, and they can be imported to different Kindles (in the Kindle library go to Archived Items, where you will find ‘Add Other Device Collections’. On the Kindle Touch tap the Menu button after going to Archived Items.) But I would like to see Amazon add a tool to the Manage My Kindle page that would let you organize your library into collections and then deliver that organizational structure to various Kindle ereaders and devices with Kindle apps that are registered to one’s account.
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Lisa – Agreed. I’ve wished for this as well, though my son is old enough to see any of my ebooks. I think I mentioned this when Amazon first announced password protection with firmware v2.5. It would be great if we could password protect individual books or documents. Now that Amazon makes personal documents available to all Kindles within a group it would also probably be a useful feature for Kindles in business as well.
Great article. I would like to see some sort of password protection for books. I read some things I’d never want my kids to see and have no way to fully remove them without dealing with Amazon. (deleting/archiving don’t make them gone forever.).