Ebooks

Ebooks failed. Critics of ebook cite various reasons, including prices and the love for paper books, to explain why ebooks failed. While there is truth in these critiques, one can not but ask why ebooks failed to take off while research papers in electronic form became dominant. Although there is more to research publications that the digital revolution should promise, the raw digitization of papers already shows great advantage against printed papers. Digital copies are vastly easier to distribute, organize, and index. Web sites like arXiv are extremely popular for people to find papers.

One reason is that ebooks are often technologically backward compared with the layout of printed content. Although Apple managed to revolutionize the ergonomics of reading through the iPad, the aesthetics didn't extend to Apple Books. It's worth noting that many beautiful interactive ebooks are published as apps, rather than ebooks, which demonstrates the versatility of the tablet platform and indicates the shortcoming of ebooks may have technological roots. HTML5 revolutionized the web. There should be a comparable revolution for ebooks if they are to succeed.

Compared with music, which is a 1-dimensional construct, ebooks are more challenging with 2-dimensional layout and interactive multimedia that add time as a third dimension. Ebook publishing really should be considered as a technical business. Apple's Pages app is very far from enough to command ebooks. Even Adobe InDesign offers limited solution to ebooks. There is a need for a revolution comparable with what TeX did for technical publishing.

Educational system can use most of the advancements of ebooks. If people remember how difficult it is to carry printed copies of heavy textbooks that often require dismemberment, they will appreciate digital textbooks beautifully designed for tablets.

The road is long, and we will see what happens.