Amazon’s recent announcement of a Kindle beta test with public libraries rekindled my interest (so to speak), so I decided to try again — with the Kindle app for iPad.

Here’s my initial take on borrowing an ebook from the King County Library. It’s convenient, but not without issues for people who love the way books are designed…

A Match Made in Heaven?

My first attempt to borrow a Kindle format book from the public library went nowhere: it was too early — the local library had not yet updated its systems for Kindle. On a second attempt a few days ago, I found the “entry point” in KCLS’ online catalog, and identified a handful of books to borrow for use on the iPad/Kindle. But I’d have to wait; none were available that day.

Today I received an email announcing that my first ebook was available for download, but I’d have to act fast: it would expire within 4 days.

I clicked on the link, discovered that the web page had kept my library card and password credentials from the prior session, and I authorized the “digital book loan” (a process that took several steps).

The lending process takes you to Amazon’s website, where Amazon links the library’s ebook to the authorized Kindle reader (or your “cloud reader”). I imagine that this is part of the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that enforces the DRM policy purchased by KCLS — the limits on how many copies of this ebook may be in circulation at the same time.

So far the process worked smoothly (with a fast broadband connection).

The only glitch occurred with the Kindle app on the iPad — and it was probably just a timing issue with synchronization. That said, the first couple of attempts to download the library’s ebook to the iPad yielded no result.

So I went back to Amazon to ensure the ebook showed up in my authorized Kindle repository, and that this book was properly linked to my iPad. I was pleased to see a clear indication that this was a library copy, versus one that I have purchased…

On my next attempt to download the library’s ebook to the iPad/Kindle, the process was quick and easy.

When the library’s online system is working quickly (which is not always the case), I’d say this whole process would take 5 minutes or less.

Much faster than getting in the car, and driving to and from the nearest library branch.

Which leaves me with my remaining reservation about the current state-of-the-art for books on Kindle (or ePub formats): the lack of typographic sophistication. The current standards may be fine for pulp fiction, but they are a real disappointment for bibliophiles who prefer higher quality “trade fiction” and books with an intrinsic design sensibility.

For the book I borrowed, The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett, the loss of typographic styling makes it difficult in places to comprehend the author’s intent — or even to differentiate literary embellishments from the flow of the narrative.

The Loss of Fidelity Detracts from the Story

To illustrate what I mean, here is a cropped photo of the first page of The Game of Kings, as rendered by the Kindle app on my iPad 2. Except for the chapter head, all the text is styled the same. There’s no additional white space as you would see in the print version.

The Kindle Version (via iPad)

Although it’s not obvious in the photo above, The Game of Kings begins with a poetry excerpt that precedes the first line of narrative. Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the typographic treatment or page layout to signal that this block of text functions differently from the main body of the story.

To make matters worse the poem uses archaic language — and the combination could be off-putting as a first impression.

The Print Version

By way of comparison here is what this page looks like in the print version that’s currently in circulation:

With this layout it’s easy for the reader to understand that the poem sets the theme for the chapter as a whole. It’s clearly set apart from the first line of the narrative.

The loss of typographic and page layout fidelity in the Kindle version is a huge issue for books written by Dorothy Dunnett, an author who liberally embellishes her stories with poems and literary allusions in multiple languages.

Early Days — Or a Battle for Control?

I understand that the digital publishing workflow is still in embryonic state, that it’s difficult for publishers to adapt the print versions to Kindle and ePub format without loss of fidelity.

Among other constraints Apple and Amazon seriously limit the number of typefaces available, a huge obstacle to any designer who wants to preserve artistic intent across all versions and renditions of the book. For the technically adept, there are workarounds with embedded fonts for authors and publishers aiming at Apple’s iBook format, but not for publishers going to Kindle. (At present I suspect we’ll see embedded fonts primarily from the self-publishing community…)

Here’s a wonderful discussion of some of the issues, from my friend Bill Hill, formerly of Aldus and Microsoft, a true pioneer in electronic publishing.

I look forward to the day when ebooks are full-fledged alternatives, with additional convenience benefits, rather than artistic compromises that trade off design intent for ease of adaptation. Leaving you with so much less of the original expression of the author’s intent. And a disappointing reading experience.

I hope Bill Hill is wrong, that we won’t have to wait another 10 years before ebooks achieve typographic and design layout fidelity.

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Since then I’ve been living on fruit smoothies and roasted garlic soup. The VitaMix has offered a refreshing way to deal with the unpleasant side-effects of a nasty cold. I’ve also tried other unconventional remedies.

My friend Jenny brought a box of Wellness Fizz tablets, Vitamin-C plus herbal supplements to dissolve in warm water. Consumed 3 or 4 times a day, Wellness Fizz claims to boost the immune system’s ability to fight back. Even so I’ve had to resort to Zicam, decongestants, restorative yoga and lots of sleep…

No miracle cures, only modest relief — but I’ve found some pleasant distractions.

With the Help of a Few Good Books

When too ill to socialize, exercise or work, listening to jazz and classical music can be wonderfully distracting. Likewise a good book or a riveting movie. Forced to slow down while recovering, I’ve found time for some fine books.

I loved Camilla Gibb’s The Beauty of Humanity Movement: A Novel.  Set in Vietnam, the story introduces an aging cook — an itinerant street vendor — famous throughout Hanoi for his pho. You learn about Old Man Hung, his history, the proper way to make a bowl of pho — and the experiences and people who’ve touched his life over the years. The story is richly embellished with the details of everyday life in Hanoi, thanks to the author’s background as a social anthropologist. You can almost smell the lemongrass and cilantro on every page…

From Vietnam to Paris, in just a few hundred pages.

This weekend I immersed myself in 1920s Paris with the Lost Generation, thanks to Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife. Her novel deals with Ernest Hemingway’s early struggles to become an author, and his years in Paris with his first wife, Hadley, “who loved him before he was famous,” as an Amazon reviewer wrote.

Although told from Hadley’s point of view, the story sheds some light on the experiences, adventures and troubled relationships that inspired Hemingway to write his first two novels, including the ground-breaking American novel, The Sun Also Rises. You’ll meet some of the luminaries of 20th century literature such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford, among others.

After a vicarious weekend in Paris with artists and famous writers, I’m anxious to re-read Hemingway’s memoir of this period, The Moveable Feast — and learn the story through his eyes.

And as for this cold — Enough, already.

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Are eBooks best suited for use cases that are fundamentally utilitarian, rather than pleasure seeking?

Why do people read eBooks?

I’ve been pondering these questions for a few days, sparked by an entrepreneur’s pitch. He dreams of reinventing how people read and experience books, at least among young people. He wants to host the conversations that take place around books, via a new “social eBook app” for the iPad and other tablet devices.

A New App for eBooks

His eBook app will be enhanced by “a social wrapper” — in order to encourage online conversations among readers of a book, or exchanges between book fans and the author. In brief, here’s the concept.

Reading as a social experience

Imagine a book opened in front of you. Each page of the book is displayed on the right — pretty much what you’d see if you were using Apple’s iBook app on an iPad. On the left, where you’d normally see the facing page, his app’s UI displays short messages exchanged among readers of that particular book — similar to a Twitter message stream or a chat window.

His notion of reading plus online conversation may offer real benefits to students who must read the same book for a class assignment. As long as his platform allows people to express their ideas or questions without the artificial constraint of the 140-character tweet, this technology may lead to enhanced learning and student engagement. Assuming, that is, that the books they need to read are made available for his eBook app.

But I’d like to share my impression about the implications of this approach for people who read for pleasure.

First Impression — Not for Me

My reaction to the new concept was tepid, even though I own an iPad 2 and have been collecting apps for it. I’m a voracious reader: consuming between 100–200 books a year, for pleasure, plus several dozen business books. You’d think I’d be the ideal customer for this enhanced eBook app given the value I place on reading.

But here’s why the proposition doesn’t appeal to me:

• At my level of “addiction to reading,” the public library is the most cost-effective source of books for me.
• I love the look and feel of a well-designed book. So far, the eBooks that I’ve seen (iBook and Kindle formats) lack any real typographic elegance — each page looks pretty much the same. Books become boring as a result.
• When converted to EPUB® format, the book’s original page layout is drastically scaled back when rendered by the digital book reader. This simplification can reduce meaning or comprehension — whatever was intended by the way the designer laid out text, headlines and images on the page to be printed.

For example, the sample shown here condenses a lot of information to a single page, thanks to the design choices that are expressed through this layout.

But my most important reason for preferring today’s book format to a “social eBook Reader” is the desire to preserve the holy grail of reading: the state of flow, a wonderful emotional state that is the hallmark of the world’s best books.

Reading & The Joys of “Flow”

When reading a well-told story, I’m immersed in the experience — caught up in the state of “flow.” My personal boundaries dissolve when I enter the storyteller’s world: I feel the heat and dust of the North African souk, or the penetrating cold and damp of the Scottish highlands.

Psychologists describe flow as a very desirable state of mind (source: WikiPedia):

According to Csíkszentmihályi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand…. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task although flow is also described as a deep focus on nothing but the activity — not even oneself or one’s emotions.

While it’s possible to achieve flow while reading an eBook, the experience of flow is so rewarding that choosing to interrupt it for chat messages is the last thing I can imagine doing when reading for pleasure.

But this may be a generational preference… Perhaps teenagers and young adults are willing to sacrifice the experience of flow in order to check in with each other. Or maybe their hyper-active, multi-tasking world is not one that’s amenable to flow; not having experienced it, they have no reason to want it. For them, is connection preferable to flow?

Perhaps my real issue with this concept is that I prefer asynchronous to synchronous socializing, when it comes to the experience of reading a book.

Yes, We Engage Socially around Books

My friends and I are highly likely to talk with each other when it comes to books or magazines we’ve enjoyed. Books are common topics of conversation among us. We bring bags of books to social events, for sharing with each other — our own lending library, if you will.

We always talk about books (or movies) when we go for hikes or long walks, and often over a glass of wine or a shared meal.

Some are avid book club members, and love talking about a book with others during semi-structured club meetings.

After finishing a book that’s made a huge impression, we’re quite likely to email a recommendation.

Most of us already own an iPad or a Kindle; all of us have computers. So it’s not the device that’s the issue.

It’s just hard to imagine that we’d want to chat in real-time while reading for pleasure, when we so enjoy talking about books face to face…

The entrepreneur is actively seeking financing, so I chose not to identify his company nor his product. I wish him the best of luck, as long as there are enough people who will value digital books enhanced by a social experience.

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I bought a Kindle DX just before a family vacation, and was looking forward to carrying my library in a highly portable 1-pound package.

Friends have been singing Kindle’s praises for several years. The recent advances in screen sharpness and contrast persuaded me that the time had finally come to buy a Kindle for myself. So a week ago I bought the latest DX model, one that offers a 9.7” screen and a 50% improvement in contrast.

At over $400 with tax, this larger Kindle is quite expensive, so I expected a lot from it. Perhaps too much. In the end I returned it, for a variety of functional and aesthetic reasons.

Given its price I felt Kindle had to become, if not my primary reading medium, at least one that I’d be willing to use on a regular and frequent basis. So I decided to test it out, to see if it might become my preferred reading device, or an away-from-home alternative that would be more convenient than carrying printed books.

My Issues with the Kindle DX

Practical, Not Lovable

If you love the UI of an iPhone, the Kindle’s interface seems klunky and dated. It’s utilitarian, and gets the job done — but doesn’t leave you feeling delighted. Fortunately, it takes little time to learn.

I was never able to figure out how to delete unwanted books or samples, or how to organize things into collections. (Or even if those features are available.)

I did successfully transfer a PDF from my Mac to the Kindle; however, I did not like the fact that there was no easy zooming or scaling function that would enable me to resize the PDF page to fit within a single Kindle screen. If this feature exists within the Kindle’s UI, it’s hidden somewhere.

Not Easy on the Eyes

Over the course of a week I used my Kindle for a minimum of 30 minutes at a time, at multiple times during the day and in varying lighting conditions. Despite the vaunted improvements in screen contrast, in every case I had to put on “computer glasses” to see the screen clearly.

I don’t wear glasses to read books or magazines. That said, I was unable to work with the Kindle for more than a few moments without putting on glasses.

Even with the glasses I suffered some degree of eye strain every time I read from the Kindle for more than 30 minutes. (I read printed books for hours at a time with no ill effects.) After reading from the Kindle, I almost always experienced eye strain, followed by a mild headache.

There’s no option to manage contrast or brightness, so if the setting doesn’t work optimally for you, there’s nothing you can do about it. Although my friends don’t comment on this, my husband complained about eye strain after reading a magazine for an hour or so…

Design Limitations

No Typography. As someone who loves the look and feel of a well-designed book, I struggled with Kindle’s limited feature set when it comes to page design and layout. Although you can vary the size of the characters, there’s only one font. Therefore all books look the same.

Unlike web browsers, where you can change the default serif and sans serif type choices, the Kindle supports a single typeface. The font is nicely designed, but it becomes boring after a while.

Having said that, the character shapes are crisp and clear. I suspect this is the best that Kindle can display for this generation device.

No kerning or word spacing. Unfortunately, for books laid out with a justified right margin, Kindle’s primitive word spacing produces rivers of white space down the column of text. I found all this white space between words to be distracting. Sadly, this seems to be the most common design format, at least for the books I tried.

Manuscript-style page layouts. It’s also clear that Kindle is optimized for simple mass market paperbacks.

If the Kindle is able to render pages designed with sidebar content, the mark-up structure must be too inconvenient for publishers to use.

As a result my husband’s and my experiences reading periodical material were quite disappointing. We saw text only, no sidebars, no images in context. We didn’t see teaser articles. Instead you have to scroll through all the articles sequentially in order to decide which ones to read.

Having said that, we were reading niche publications, like sailing magazines and Le Monde. Perhaps some magazine publishers are investing the time to optimize their publications for Kindle; if so, we did not happen to download any of their samples.

Whenever my husband and I read periodicals, we found each article’s sidebars inserted within the main text column — making sidebars far less effective at supplying supplementary information or perspectives.

Only 16 shades of grey. There’s no color, and only 16 shades of grey. That means designers have few options for organizing books or magazines using a “visual language.” Again, this leaves the impression that you’re reading manuscripts — because even today’s paperbacks feature subtle grey-scale design elements to distinguish chapter heads or section dividers… I missed that kind of design finesse in books ported to the Kindle.

Early Days

Kindle’s current limitations remind me of the very early days of digital publishing, back in the mid-1980s when laser printers had limited output capabilities, and people printed right-justified books or periodicals using MS Word or primitive publishing tools…

I imagine that Kindle’s screen rendering capabilities will someday overcome these limitations, at a reasonable price point, but that time is probably years off.

Apple’s iPad is an obvious alternative to try; however, some of my geeky friends say eye strain will occur with iPads too.

After this experience I’m not rushing out to buy one…

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She loves Kindle’s promise, but disenchantment is already setting in… For reasons that aren’t clear, the usage scenario she has in mind is not well supported by the current market environment. She has spent hours searching www.amazon.fr, to no avail. No French books to speak of, and hardly any periodicals.

Her trial subscription to Le Monde has revealed a number of usability issues. There’s no teaser format that enables her to skip to the articles that most interest her. No images, text only.

Update: March 14, 2012 — Amazon has launched the French Kindle Store (at last!), and now offers over 4000 French classics at no charge. You can visit Amazon for more information on what’s available for French speakers. It will be interesting to see how long it takes the French publishing industry to agree to release current titles for enjoyment on a Kindle… Here’s a summary of the current situation.

And now, back to my friend’s wish list — for the experience she wants on a Kindle…

En Français, S’il Vous Plait

Her dream: read French novels, newspapers and magazines on a conveniently portable device like the Kindle. Current releases, not just 19th century public domain books. Because she’s passionate about perfecting her French comprehension and pronunciation skills, she’d love to read while listening to a simultaneous playback via MP3 (or equivalent).

French is not her native language, so she wants to be able to select unfamiliar words on the Kindle, thereby launching a built-in dictionary whose entries explain their meaning. She’d also welcome the option of viewing French-to-English translations of unknown words and slang (a must-have for people whose French is less fluent than hers.)

She’s very interested in Kindle’s text-to-speech option, especially if it doesn’t sound like a robot. Needless to say, she expects the text-to-speech option for French content to produce words pronounced correctly in French, rather than listen to a techno-voice trying to pronounce French words as if they had been written in English.

Before ordering the Kindle, my friend did some research which revealed that Amazon had released a digital publishing platform for French language authors in January. That sparked her purchase of a Kindle. Surely, she thought, there’d be French ebooks in the marketplace by now, 6+ months since Amazon released its multi-language publishing platform.

Hélas! She’s learned there are few contemporary books in French for Kindle. And no linked dictionary for French content as there is for English language content.

Too Early, Or Too Unusual?

Her big question: is she just suffering early adopter pains, and if she waits patiently, will someday have the opportunity to read French books and magazines on a Kindle? Or is she an outlier, a member of a niche market of French readers who would welcome electronic books, but who are too few in number to motivate the French publishing industry to embrace the new digital formats?

And what about the French government’s continuing quest to promulgate the French language around the world? Will France succeed in ensuring a steady demand for French language publications beyond French borders? And if so, surely digital formats would make French publications more easily accessible to a broader global audience if booksellers could avoid the brick-and-mortar challenges of inventory forecasting, shipping costs and other import-related challenges.

Update

The Wall Street Journal describes the role of the French government in protecting the rights of small independent booksellers, and speculates on what’s in store for electronic books (September 24, 2010 article). Will the same law that protects small booksellers against heavy discounting also apply to electronic books?

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Less well known (except among book publishers and authors), Seattleites read more books per capita than people in almost any other city in the US. So it’s not surprising that established or aspiring authors visit Seattle to pitch their latest books. We enthusiastically support an ecosystem of independent booksellers, as well as one of the most active public library systems in the nation.

Last night Daniel Pink, prolific author, came to town to promote his latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. I loved his prior book, A Whole New Mind, so I persuaded 3 friends to join me for Pink’s presentation. Little did I know that the experience would be more about promotion and less about substance.

Our reputation for rain, lattes, and liberal attitudes was clearly top-of-mind for Daniel Pink. He quickly shed his formal navy suit jacket when he realized he was the only guy in the auditorium wearing a suit. (It reminded me that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a guy in a suit and tie in Seattle.)

Sadly, Pink committed the classic sin of underestimating his audience by talking down to those well-read, if casually dressed Seattleites. He put more emphasis on entertainment value than content in the substance of his remarks — clearly his goal was to persuade us to buy his new book rather than educate us. So Pink’s attempted low-brow humor — frequent apologies for using big words like “fiduciary responsibility” or “cognitive work” — kind of missed the mark. I don’t know — maybe that goes over well in the Heartland, but not here.

During the drive home one of my friends, a retired restaurateur, complained that his 60-minute speech felt more like “an outline” than a solid presentation. Hmm, I said. So this morning I compared his 18-minute presentation in London at TED to his hour-long pitch in Seattle last night. And she was absolutely right: he delivered more substance in 18 minutes to those Londoners than he did to his book loving audience in Seattle.

During the Q&A session it became clear that the Seattle audience was full of educators, entrepreneurs, local government officials, business managers, execs, retirees, and out-of-work talent looking for jobs. So we probably understood his vocabulary and allusions.

Another social sin was Microsoft-bashing (a hometown sport, but not one people welcome when outsiders do it). I sat next to a friend who is a director-level exec at Microsoft, and she had just blogged favorably about Drive. Her wince when Pink knocked “Microsofties” was pained. [Disclosure: as a former Apple employee who has never worked at Microsoft, I enjoy the bashing but recognize that it can be provocative to a Seattle audience.]

So, my advice to presenters and book promoters: know your audience.

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Each of these big thinkers has offered up pearls of wisdom from their life’s experience or their professional adventures — and some of their notions will resonate for days after in your mind. It’s easy to consume: one big idea per page.

For example, consider this gem from Daniel Pink under the heading “Autonomy.”

Pink writes that “management isn’t natural” if you want people to engage their hearts, minds and creative passions at work. Management is great for ensuring compliance, but not for eliciting break-through ideas or world-changing products. I love Pink’s quote in What Matters Now:

If we want engagement, and the mediocrity-busting results it produces, we have to make sure people have autonomy over the four most important aspects of their work:

• Task — what they do
• Time — when they do it
• Technique — how they do it
• Team — whom they do it with

After a decade of truly spectacular underachievement, what we need now is less management and more freedom — fewer individual automatons and more autonomous individuals.

Daniel Pink’s musings on the sources of motivation help me to understand why I find life as an independent consultant vastly more rewarding than climbing the corporate ladder inside a traditional enterprise.

Pink’s insights also explain why my husbands and friends (all trapped within management-dominated enterprises) complain so often, and so bitterly, about their jobs. No doubt their frustration is caused by lack of control over 1 or more of the 4 items cited by Pink. I can offer advice on how to improve their situations, but if they’re tightly controlled by managers or constrained by their understanding of  “the system” — the way things work here — they can see no light at the end of their personal tunnels as long as they continue to work for those enterprises. And that’s a crying shame, because these are brilliant, talented, caring and experienced people at the height of their careers.

Unlike them I chose to exit the corporate job environment 15 years ago. As an independent consultant, I can control or influence all 4 of those aspects of my work, so what I do professionally is meaningful and intrinsically motivating; offers opportunities for out-of-the-box thinking and resourceful problem solving; and allows me to make lasting contributions to my clients in ways they find distinctive and memorable. Thanks to Daniel Pink, now I understand why.

And thanks to Seth Godin for sharing these contributions from such brilliant thinkers. What a gift to all would-be change agents for 2010!

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On Becoming a Novelist

Sue Monk Kidd wrote the wildly popular The Secret Life of Bees, her first novel.  As we learn in Pomegranates, Kidd agonized over the decision to write a novel given her long career as a nonfiction author. She reveals how and where she made the decision to write a novel, The Secret Life of Bees, as well as what inspired many of Bees’ themes and imagery (such as the Black Madonna and bees). Traveling with Pomegranates and The Secret Life of Bees are connected on many levels, both literary and spiritual.

For aspiring novelists her descriptions of emotional upheavals, creative ferment, sources of inspiration, spiritual “moments of truth” and an ongoing battle with self-esteem offer a precious peek into the creative process.

The … surge of creativity I’ve felt…. Where does the improvisation, the freedom, the hint of new authority and potency come from? Images well up in me more spontaneously, trailing along a stream of ideas, memories, feelings, and symbols, and I feel connected to a sourcelike place in myself.

Pomegranates is a yummy book — I should have savored it instead of racing through so I could return it to the library. It’s definitely a book to recommend to friends and re-read someday at a more leisurely pace.

Life Passages

On the surface this is a travel memoir, a story told in alternating voices, as mother and daughter contrast their experiences of travel together in Greece and France. They visit key destinations for early Christian pilgrims, as well as ancient Goddess sites – a sort of feminists’ journey. I’ve visited some of those places, and enjoyed the opportunity to relive them through the authors’ experiences. And even more, to learn the inspirational sources of imagery in The Secret Life of Bees, such as the Black Madonna of Rocamadour, shown here.

But the book’s most profound moments occur when each author describes her feelings as they work through life passages, and redefine their relationship as they both transition into new life stages:

• On the threshold of turning 50, the mother is facing menopause, mortality (her own and her mother’s), and is thinking about unresolved relationship issues with her mother and her daughter.
• The daughter has just graduated from college, is still agonizing over her rejection from grad school, suffers from low self-esteem, and does not yet know who or what she wants to be.

For her fellow Baby Boomers, the most poignant moments occur when Sue Monk Kidd writes about the pain of leaving youth behind while not yet ready to embrace what she calls “The Old Woman.” And then she describes the joy and release of acceptance. Here’s a sample, written toward the end of the book when she begins to embrace “the final third of my life”:

By Christmas, the need to examine my face for lines and sags left me. I recognized the growing permutations as more than the effects of time. They became a poignant history – tracings of my experience and character, the passionate individuality of my soul, the story of lived life written in the tenderness of skin. I began to find a worn beauty in all of that. I could never cut it away.

Needless to say the title’s reference to pomegranates is laden with symbolism and references to Greek myths, fertility, and other imagery.

Happy reading!

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Their book is an in-depth discussion of their manifesto for “a New PR” — to reinvent the practice of PR given the onslaught of social media, new forms of peer-to-peer engagement, and the emergence of conversational marketing. There’s a lot to like in what they’re advocating, even though it threatens to turn the traditional practice of marketing inside out.

But — I’ve struggled for a week now to get my thoughts in order before writing the review, as requested by their publisher. (For my creative procrastination, see this post.)

Much as I agree with the ideas and approaches advocated by the co-authors, I have mixed feelings about the book itself. The book is chock full of great ideas, but it suffers from insufficient editing. It reads as if the publisher has conflated the blog postings of two prominent thinkers without investing sufficient time, energy (or political capital?) to edit out the redundancies.

The book would have been more powerful at half the length. I read it from start to finish but found it slow going due to the repetitious material. To be honest, if I hadn’t been asked to review it, I might have stopped reading midway through the book. But I’d made a promise, so I had to follow through.

Some infographics would have helped to illustrate the authors’ key ideas, and break up the monotony of the long running text. The page design was prosaic, which didn’t help.

In retrospect I’m not quite clear on the intended audience. Practicing PR professionals who have not yet tipped their toes into the waters of social media? Are there any left? It definitely felt like a primer for at least the first half of the book.

I think the authors’ blogs are actually more compelling: Brian Solis’ blog and Deirdre Breakenridge’s blog – both focused on PR 2.0.

In reading this book I learned a dirty secret: PR pros have problems with self-esteem. The authors believe that those who embrace “the New PR” will deliver true value to their clients – and society – and will thereby regain respect for themselves and their profession.

In no particular order here are some thought nuggets that I enjoyed, and wrote down in my notebook (quotes from the book):

• a new set of accidental influencers
• the magic middle
• participant observation
• the art and science of marketing without marketing
• social network fatigue
• the ability to listen and engage in conversations without speaking in messages
• the shift of PR from a broadcast machine to community participation

Disclosure: I don’t know the authors and have never been a PR professional; however, as a high tech marketer I’ve worked with PR pros for years. Like all Apple marketers I was taught the Regis McKenna model for high tech marketing. This approach was also the conceptual grounding for high tech marketing guru Geoff Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and other groundbreaking business books. He worked for Regis McKenna before branching out on his own.

And I fully recognize that the adoption of “the New PR” means that marketers have to change their ways too.

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The jury’s out.

Time for confession: I’ve been a book lover all my life. I’m passionate about a well-told tale, and love browsing independent bookstores and the local public library. Relative to most Americans, I spend a fortune on books, both fiction and nonfiction. In any given year I read hundreds of books, thanks to early training in speed reading. But I don’t yet own a Kindle or a Sony e-book device. Their value propositions aren’t sufficiently compelling, at least not yet.

To me the primary benefits of digital books are convenience, portability and searchability – functional, utilitarian benefits. Where’s the joy?

Like most people I read books for a variety of reasons:

• Pleasure: the desire to be captivated by a well-told tale or enthralled by an interesting and complex set of characters (e.g., Possession)
• Curiosity: an interest in learning about people and cultures, places, historical figures or times in history that are way outside my personal experience (e.g., Three Cups of Tea or The Girls of Riyadh)
• Distraction: a way to pass the time on a long flight (e.g., The DaVinci Code)
• Thirst for knowledge: a way to learn new theories, concepts or models that might benefit my personal or professional life (e.g., The Tipping Point, Groundswell, etc.)
• Guidance or self-help: a way to learn new skills or contemplate behavior changes (e.g., Yoga Anatomy or The Not So Big Life)
• Business: reference sources that relate to specific areas of expertise (e.g., Marketing Metrics)

I understand the convenience of digital books for reference purposes, such as travel guidebooks or business books that I might want to consult on a regular basis. In those cases searchability is a real benefit. I can also imagine what might happen if e-book readers had built-in GPS devices, to help find current restaurant or movie reviews that are linked to the device’s current location.

But even so…

Today’s Devices Require Too Many Compromises

For me devices like the Kindle 2 still require too much of a compromise: you lose the tactile and aesthetic experience of a well-designed book. Books distributed via the Kindle 2 must sacrifice the author or editor’s intent for typography, design and page layout in favor of searchability, portability and the requirement to offer scalable font sizes for people with vision challenges.

Given the device’s limit of 16 shades of grey, complex illustrations and typography must be compromised. The screen is still way too small. Yes, you can install documents in PDF format (via conversion), but I find myself wondering whether in doing so, you lose the fidelity of the designed page when you make that conversion.

Will Next Gen Devices Hit the Sweet Spot?

I understand from online gossip that the next Kindle will offer a larger screen (just under 10 inches). I wonder how many shades of grey it will support; whether its screen resolution will be better than today’s 150–167 dpi limitations (whatever the actual details).

Based on my experience 20 years ago with the desktop publishing revolution, I know that the quality of the reading experience will improve enormously once the technology affords 256 shades of grey and improved screen resolutions (closer to 300 dpi). And a page size that approximates a 1:1 ratio with the original page layout.

I can imagine buying digital books when e-book reader devices impose fewer constraints on book design: no sacrifices in page and chapter layout, typography, illustration fidelity, etc. I don’t require color, but I do want high-fidelity grey scale.

It’s possible that the next generation e-books, given larger screen sizes and improved resolution, will hit the sweet spot — when my motivation is business-related or utilitarian, i.e., when seeking information like maps and travel guides, restaurant reviews, newspaper articles, blogs, etc. I can also understand the appeal of e-books for in-the-moment distraction while waiting in line, or passing time on a cross-country flight. For those situations I’d be willing to give up the tactile joys of holding a book and turning pages in favor of the option of carrying lots of books “inside” a device that weighs less than a pound.

It would be nice to have my entire library “at my fingertips” – fully searchable — but it’s hard to imagine that Amazon would ever offer a pricing model that would make that affordably attractive. Not for someone like me who already owns hundreds, if not thousands, of books. Amazon’s pricing model to add digital rights to the cost of a printed book (when purchased one at a time) is still too high a delta to pay for a single book, let alone large numbers of books.

Net net: for someone like me the devices aren’t yet good enough.

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