IPad as an ebook reader in Australia

If I didn’t like Plants vs Zombies so much, and if I hadn’t just realized that Margaret Atwood’s last novel was a continuation of the dystopic world of Oryx and Crake, then I may have more to report about my new iPad. Instead of putting it through its paces, I’ve been playing games and using it as an ebook reader. It is an excellent interface for both.

In a couple of days I will post about the different aps I have tried on the iPad and whether I think the device really is “magical and revolutionary” as claimed in the Apple marketing.  Tonight though, a bit about the iPad as an ebook reader.

In Australia there is still only one book sitting forlornly in the iBook store, the free copy of Alice in Wonderland. The reading interface for the iBook ap is made to look like a paper book, complete with spine, pages and page turning action. It’s rather pretty as an object, but a bit too try-hard.

The iPad is the best ebook reading device I have tried. Although I read that it was too heavy to hold comfortably (Looking at the iPad from two angles) , I am fine with it resting in my lap with the print size adjusted accordingly.  Other devices I’ve tried are the Kindle, my desktop PC, my large laptop, my netbook, my iPhone, and even the XO laptop that has a special screen made for reading in bright light. I understand that the matt, low-light screen on eInk readers works well for others, especially those who get headaches reading on a backlit screen. For me, the black flash between pages and slow refresh rate of the Kindle are mildly annoying.  I don’t seem to read in light levels where the eInk is superior to the screen of the iPad. There is an extremely wide viewing angle for the iPad screen and it adjusts adequately to different light levels.  I prefer the energy-saving potential of  eInk, where a single charge lasts up to two weeks. The iPad screen is a perfect size for reading. Compared to my netbook, it is more comfortable to carry from room to room and to drop into my backpack. The netbook’s neoprene case is excellent as a cover for the iPad.

I was the type of kid who read whatever was at hand – cereal boxes, old Readers’ Digests, fold-out operating instructions for transistor radios – rather than have nothing to read at all, so the device (and sometimes even the content) is often secondary to satisfying my desire to have *something* to read. Unlike many librarians and readers, much of my pleasure is in the act of reading for itself, not from the physical act of holding a book, feeling the weight in my hand, stroking the cover or smelling the pages as they turn. I enjoy books as aesthetic objects, but I don’t think I have ever equated reading only with books.

My preferred ebook application on the iPad is the Kindle ap from Amazon. Ethically I disagree with locking up content in the .azw format and making it legally impossible and technically nigh-impossible to read one’s own ebooks in a way other than using Amazon’s application. Practically, I love the one-click delivery of my ebook straight to my device without having to plug into a PC and fiddle about transferring it. Although it is possible to read other content types using the Kindle application, I think the average user will not be bothered and will pay for the convenience of instant and easy delivery. I love the synchronisation between all my devices, so that if I am in line at the supermarket I can whip out my iPhone and carry on reading my novel from where I left off on my iPad in bed the night before. I have tried using the Stanza and Kobo applications as ebook readers, and I don’t see a lot of difference between the three of them for me and the way I read (which is indiscriminately anywhere, anytime).

I downloaded the WIRED magazine application for the iPad, which costs $5 for content of the current print/online issue.The publisher worked with Adobe to create the right platform, with the idea that they “write once, publish everywhere”.  One holds the iPad in portrait mode and uses a finger to scroll horizontally from article (or advert) to the next one. To read an article or section in depth, one swipes upward so that the rest of the article appears from below. Some articles have images that you can touch to see the text below change to describe the item in the image. There is a little video engine that allows one to swipe left to right and see, for example, Mars rotate so you can read little flags on the surface of the planet describing recent Mars missions…or watch a Lego car being built and disassembled. Some advertisements have links out to external sites on the web – which seemed like a good idea at the time I am sure, but really, I’m not going to click out of the application, into the browser and then need to find my place again. It was cute to click on the front cover and see a filmclip previewing Toy Story Three, but all-in-all it felt a bit like it wasn’t there yet. I think there is such a tension between trying to look familiar enough to the reader that they accept this is a magazine, while still pushing the limits of what this new display can do. If they had dropped linearity altogether to really take advantage of the way a reader can swim and flip through the text, if they had not anchored all their film clips and images firmly to a corresponding text story, then I think people would not have felt like they were reading a magazine.

Critics of the iPad application for The Australian complained of too many advertisements and many articles not appearing on the iPad when they were in the printed newspaper. I can’t comment, as I don’t get the print edition. This time, I was set back $5 for a month worth of content delivered daily. Tonight there is an article about rough seas in Wollongong today, a Sunday, so new content is being added on the day they do not publish their print edition.  It looks like I can’t view archives of previous days’ newsitems. There is no Weekend Magazine content at all. There has been no attempt to exploit multimedia with this application, just a few shortcuts in the menu structure so you can go more quickly to the section you want.

I won’t be using my iPad in the bathtub or at the beach, but I think it will be my preferred way of reading fiction from now on. In Australia,  as I have said before, the major impediment to ebooks being widely and well used is neither the  device nor application used. It is content. I had high hopes that Borders’ Kobo store that launched a couple of weeks ago would contain more Australian content and at cheaper prices than  Amazon’s Kindle store. The cautious support from Australian publishers,  like Melbourne University Press’s Louise Adler,  during interviews on the day the Kobo store was launched left me hoping for more than was delivered. Searching the ebook store reveals no Tim Winton, no Patrick White, no Helen Garner, no Peter Carey and just two ebooks by Kate Grenville .

I am very glad that on 9 April the Minister for Innovation announced a Book Industry Strategy Group to ” develop strategies to ensure that the Australian book industry continues to thrive in a global digital environment.”, Charting a High Tech Future for the Book Industry . I am very, very pleased that Barry Jones, recipient of the Australian Library and Information Association’s Redmond Barry Award, will be chairing the group. As an Australian who wants to read Australian content on my iPad today, I am puzzled about why it will take a year for the group to report back.

Oh well, back to snuggle under the doona with my iPad and After the Flood by one of my favourite Canadian authors.