JUSTIN CHEN/YH

E-reading

Imagine, if you will, the future of reading.

Packing for spring break, you log on to Amazon.com and click a few bestsellers into your shopping cart. Within seconds, the books are yours - transferred electronically to a handheld device. The next day, you frolic on the beaches of North Carolina with Grisham and Clancy tucked safely in your pocket. A number of tech moguls have staked a claim in this future. And if their inventions catch on, Yalies could be reading very differently, very soon.

Last week, Steven King's wildly successful e-novella Riding the Bullet showed the publishing world that ebooks can rouse interest on par with print releases. It also sparked debate among students. Some Yale students felt strongly that the loss of bound books would be disastrous. Others argued that new inventions will be a boon both for serious scholarship and for pleasure reading.

King's book, which tells the story of a Mustang-driving ghost, marks the first full electronic-only release by a best-selling author. Formatted copies of the text are downloadable on a PC, Palm Pilot, or a Rocket eBook handheld device. The text is encrypted so that it cannot be copied or printed. In the first 24 hours after its release, Riding the Bullet racked up over 400,000 online orders.

Despite Riding the Bullet's solid performance, the future of electronic texts remains uncertain. Analysts have questioned the extent to which interest in the King release was due to a novelty effect. As the dust settles, ebook technology remains very much a work in progress.

Yale's large reading community is inclined to wait and see the pace and direction of ebook technology. Riding the Bullet has heightened interest in the emerging field, but most students agree that the future has not yet arrived. It may be here sooner than students expect, however: in the next several years, the new medium will be making serious attempts to woo readers from the printed book market.

A Brief History of Electronic Texts

It is nearly thirty years since researchers at Xerox labs first explored computers' potential to reproduce classic texts. Recognizing that "anything that can be entered into a computer can be reproduced indefinitely," Michael Hart used "Replicator Technology" to post copies of the Declaration of Independence on the Xerox network. Hart soon undertook "Project Gutenberg", a massive effort to present world literature in free electronic texts.

Project Gutenberg aims to make books available to anyone and everyone. All its texts are entered in plain vanilla ASCII. This makes them readable on 99% of all computers—even antique Ataris—although the font resolution is a far cry from that of a bound book. Project Gutenberg only uses texts that are in the public domain—and consequently free.

Many Yalies are familiar with sites like Project Gutenberg, and some report using them for research. Most students, however, say they read online only when they want to try or skim a text. Few are inclined to read an entire book online.

In recent years, other types of etexts have sprung up. Some websites post stories by otherwise unpublished—and, in some cases, unpublishable—authors. Thus Project Gutenberg has Alice in Wonderland, but www.etext.org has Van Gogh in Space:
"Vincent, please, do not worry! You are the guest of my Family. You were as soon as you set foot on our ship. Please accept our patronage and support. In return, we only ask you to do what you do best... Paint!"

Other sites use internet technology in an attempt to expand the concept of reading. This year, a work about Yale has broken new ground. With the help of artists, musicians, and web designers, Connecticut author Gorman Bechard has turned his futuristic black comedy The HazMat Diary into "a completely free multimedia web-novel." The novel is set in futuristic New Haven—where the Yale University campus has been converted to apartments and a food court. On www.hazmatdiary.com, the designers have used Flash Media Player 4.0 to integrate pictures, sound, and animated graphics with the text.

In an online interview with the Herald, Bechard said that he was "continually surprised and pleased with what I see on the site." Nevertheless, the author has no plans to abandon the printed word. "As for doing another novel like HazMat—not at the moment. It's really taken up a lot of time." Bechard's next book, Ninth Square, is also set in New Haven. With it, the author hopes to "go the usual publisher route."

The Bestseller Market

Etext exchange sites and multimedia projects both use computer technology to bring literature to new audiences in new ways. Still, if there is money to be made in electronic publishing, the bulk of it lies in capturing an existing reading audience and converting it to a new medium. Riding the Bullet is an attempt to do just that.

If Simon and Schuster could convince Stephen King fans to buy and read all the author's future releases electronically, the publishing company would save a great deal of money in production, advertising, and distribution costs. Moreover, they might pass on some of the savings to consumers - and thus raise demand for King's works.

Old Industry, New Technology

Riding the Bullet served as a test case for new technologies and new business partnerships. Every copy of the book represents a joint venture between Simon and Schuster and SoftLock, a dot-com specializing in software encryption. SoftLock was recruited to ensure that the text could not be copied or transferred. The software company achieved this through a technique called "persistent encryption," wherein no more than one page of text is decoded at a time.

Online booksellers also used Riding the Bullet as an opportunity to branch out into the electronic fiction market. Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com both mounted major campaigns on their websites, all aimed at rousing interest in ebook technology. Barnes and Noble opened an "eBook Store" section on their site, in which shoppers can purchase a Rocket eBook reader ($199.00, or $269.00 for the enhanced Pro edition) or download Glassbook Reader, a program that displays etexts on a computer screen. The site pushed the Glassbook Reader, highlighting, "This reader and 30 books are free!" Amazon also offered the Rocket reader for sale, but capitalized on the hype surrounding Riding the Bullet by offering King's novella free with the GlassBook download.

Barnesandnoble.com also has an alliance with Microsoft that will come to fruition in mid-2000, when Microsoft releases its own eBook reader. A Microsoft press release stated that the company's ebook library would start at over 2000 titles and would continue to grow.

Room for Improvement

The flurry of online activity triggered by Riding the Bullet demonstrates that an real interest level exists for ebooks. The technology, however, may have some catching up to do.

Glassbook Reader has begun to build a base of titles, but their current product seems unlikely to replace the printed book. The text is confined to a computer screen, making Glassbook titles automatically less convenient than bound books. Moreover, the display is nothing more than streamlined Adobe Acrobat technology. The text is grainy and lacks contrast; no one would mistake it for a printed page.

The Rocket eBook also allows for a more portable reading experience. Its screen, however, falls far short of a printed page. While the display can vary in darkness according to reader preferences, it cannot represent words as black against a white background. Many readers are skittish about the prospects of reading books on a screen that looks like a GameBoy. Moreover, the Rocket reader's steep price prevents many consumers from considering the product.

In an attempt to improve font resolution, Microsoft's reader will use what the company calls "ClearTypeTM display technology." It will also enable readers to bookmark, highlight, and annotate their texts.

A Familiar Debate

The hype surrounding Riding the Bullet has set off a familiar debate regarding the advantages of electronic media. Some have embraced the ebook format as the future of reading, citing efficiency and volume as major assets. Others stand adamantly opposed to anything that would replace the visual and tactile pleasures of the bound book. As one Yale student put it, "You can't curl up with a computer."

Most readers fall somewhere in between these two camps - recognizing the potential boons of the new technology, but reluctant to abandon a treasured old medium. The debate centers around many of the same questions raised by the spread of email. Yale Professor Jane Levin commented on ebooks: "My first reaction was 'No'—but if it happened, we would get used to it." Levin also pointed out that the technology was sure to improve. Soon, she said, "I will be able to underline and annotate." When ebooks are sufficiently like bound books, she will have no reason to refuse them. "I prefer email," she said—and would have no fundamental objections to ebooks that emulated printed pages.

While readers ponder an electronic future, the ebook story is still largely unwritten. Even the technology's pioneers seem uncertain of where to turn next. Stephen King has announced that Riding the Bullet's "watershed" success has prompted him to consider serializing his next novel online. "In fact, I'm in the process of writing a book now," he told Time magazine. "I'm working longhand."

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