Books 2.0

I recently listened to When Markets Collide by Mohamed El-Erian. Great book. I think. At least someone thought so. Anyway, delighted as I was to get it on audio, because there was little chance I’d tackle it in print, I wasn’t surprised to find that there was a PDF file on the last disc containing charts and tables referred to in the text. This I saved to my desktop and opened after pausing the narrator at “see figure 4.1 in the included PDF”.

Now I listened to it on standard compact discs, 8 in all, through wireless headphones. I was restricted to consuming the book strictly as audio through my stereo and required my computer to call up the visual elements. Often as not, this meant dashing from the laundry room or kitchen to my desk, where I’d left the PDF open, but I digress. But suppose I had downloaded the audiobook from the iTunes store and was listening on my iPod, which can easily display images and text. How nice it would be to have my iPod chime like one of those book & tape sets I used to enjoy as a pre-schooler: when we got to “see figure 5.2″ the image would come up on the screen, I’d glance at my iPod as the narration carries on, then go back to listening.

But wait a second. If can look at my iPod for book content while listening to an audiobook, what about listening to an eBook? Not possible, I’m afraid. Ebooks are eBooks and audiobooks are audiobooks and digital though they both might be, never the twain shall meet. Though the second generation of Amazon’s Kindle can apparently read to you, I doubt it’s a very pleasant experience over long durations. At this point, invoking Sklar with the flip of a switch remains just a dream.

When I buy a book, I’d like to think I bought the privilege of reading it in any way I choose. If I buy a book as an electronic file containing text and images, why should I have to buy it all over again if I’d like to use my ears instead of my eyes as my primary organs for consuming it? Ultimately, I don’t want a Kindle with audio capabilities or an eBook app for an iPhone as much as I want a new kind of necessarily electronic book format that takes full advantage of the device through which it’s consumed.

Publishers need to stop seeing eBooks as a substitute for printed pages and start thinking about them as a means for transmitting content — any content.

I want to be able to read with my eyes while seated on the subway, then switch to audio when I have to get off and walk down the street to meet a friend for lunch. If there’s an element I need to see, sound a chime to get my eyes on the screen, then fade out to conserve battery life and keep the narration rolling. Google’s already got the technology to sync the printed page to audio narration and plenty of podcasts feature images that change at different points during playback. So near, yet so far…

HarperStudio has made a gesture in the direction of selling books in multiple media by offering ebooks and audiobooks for a small fee on top of the cost of the printed book. It’s still very early days, but I believe that at the heart of this move is the acknowledgement that publishers aren’t manfucturers: their product isn’t paper and glue. But whether HarperStudio’s model a) works financially and b) pushes anyone to develop an integrated audio/text standard remainds to be seen. Or heard. Or whatever.

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