It was watching so much Star Trek that got me interested in the Apple tablet, something I already talked about extensively in a previous post. Characters in Star Trek carry around data pads that are strangely close to what I want out of a tablet.

In the Star Trek future, everyone uses their tablets to read. Books, manifests, technical manuals, whatever, but the fact is: the characters are reading, rather than viewing multimedia content. I know that it’s fiction, but it still surprises me that the show’s writers chose to portray people in the future as readers of plain text. In reality, I doubt plain text will be the outcome of the e-book movement.

It’s not that people don’t read. They do. However, the place for one-way, plain text is dying. The Kindle and other e-reader’s might be doing okay right now, but if other companies come out with something more multimedia friendly in the same form factor, a multimedia device that supports e-books, I’m willing to bet Kindle sales will slow quite a bit.

Physical print is dying, there’s no mistake about that. Newspapers are closing all over the country because they can’t sell enough ads or copies to stay in business, because everything is moving online. And once things move online, they become graphical, pretty, interactive, editable, and comment-able. People have come to expect this, and that’s why a multimedia tablet in an e-reader form factor would do better than the Kindle or the new Barnes and Noble device, because it would support music, movies, and books with interactive features.

It’s about the technology. Right now, companies are focused on taking print books and moving them to an electronic device. But that isn’t enough. Physical books still have many advantages over e-books – they’re light, easy to read, the battery never dies, they are shareable, don’t have DRM, and are free from the public library. Those features are hard to beat, and trying to move books onto a device without offering people advantages over top of what the current technology (books) supports isn’t enough.

All Amazon and Barnes and Noble have done is make books available on a device, with the only enhanced feature being immediate delivery. One good feature and a new list of drawbacks (battery life, DRM, the dangers of owning a 300 dollar device I plan to take to the beach) isn’t enough. The medium demands a new type of content. E-books should be more than print books read on a screen.

E-books need more interactivity. I want to be able to read a book then be instantly able to participate in a discussion about the book, right from my device. I want forums devoted to the book, or the ability to tag comments in the book and share them with my friends. I want to buy (or borrow, preferably) a book and see the comments my friends made about it via a social networking interface built into the device. If my buddy reads a copy of Jim Butcher’s Storm Front and thinks page 57 is awesome enough to comment about it, I want to be able to access his comments right from the reading interface, and be able to respond.

I want to be able to read a classic like Shelley’s Frankenstein and see the annotations by famous literary scholars, if I choose to follow them, almost like the tagging system photo websites use. I want to be able to read a new novel right after it comes out and share my thoughts about that novel with my friends who are reading it too.

I want interactivity built into the book and I want to do it all from the device I’m reading on. The current e-readers don’t come close to that. The e-ink technology, while impressively imitating the experience of reading a print book, can’t support that level of interactivity. The refresh rates just aren’t up to par. A multimedia touch-screen tablet with the choice to optimize the display settings for reading text is probably a better option, unless e-ink vastly improves and can handle more interactivity.

New technology is built on creating a two-way street, and the companies building e-readers need to take advantage of that. Instead, they are focused on making e-reader devices as close to reading a print book as possible, which is the wrong way to go. They need to approach authors about writing for an e-audience. They need to focus on enhancing the reading experience on a device, not just recreating it. Because they won’t win that battle.

Getting people to embrace a new technology is all about the “killer app” concept – the new feature that necessitates a move from the old tech to the new. Social networking, annotation, interactivity built into the text of the book: all these things might not be the “killer app” that makes people switch to e-books on a device, but they are a start.

Interactivity in a book is something humanity has never done very well before – hand written notes in the margins, footnotes that take up the whole page, or separate handouts from professors, none handle interactivity as well as a simple web hyperlink. So if books are moving into the digital, it’s time to update the way this interactivity is handled. Imagine the possibilities for education alone: professors could join a group with their students and comment on aspects of the book they want to draw students’ attention to. Teachers could use book forums to discuss works with their students.

And imagine the possibilities for authors: fast feedback, right from the fans. Right now the music industry is changing, going online, and indie artists are better for it. It’s easier for them to reach their fanbase, connect with them, interact with them, and hear what fans want. I’m sure some authors wouldn’t embrace this type of interaction, but I imagine many would.

Overall, it’s no secret that e-books will eventually win. Instant publishing, over-the-air delivery, and the environmental advantages are all benefits people want to see. But without interactivity and the focus on a more graphical interface, a way of enhancing books with new features, the “killer app” aspects just aren’t there yet. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Sony need to get with the program. Until they do, people probably won’t migrate to e-books or e-readers en masse.

Keep on keepin’ on,

-m.