Burning the Page: The eBook revolution and the future of reading

need to decode as they yearn with outstretched fingers for fluency in their language and to grow up into readers. Games can be distractions from that process.
    Most publishers agree, and I think they’re right to move slowly on children’s ebooks, because being a digital native may have long-term consequences related to learning how to read. We’re in danger of rushing a whole generation of children into something unplanned and unexpected.
    And while I like the occasional TV show, I still look back at my childhood with some resentment because the television was often my babysitter. I was raised by Buck Rogers and Oscar the Grouch and geriatric game-show hosts like Bob Barker. And I can still quote the price of Cocoa Puffs from the 1980s, thanks to The Price Is Right . Digital books, like television and other media, are best meant for those Pandoras who’ve already opened their boxes and know what demons to expect inside.
    That said, I applaud the Nook team for inventing interactive ebooks. It was a bold, innovative move. And one that Apple and then Amazon were soon to copy. Likewise, when Nook introduced ebook lending, the other retailers were swift to add that feature.
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    Ebook innovation is a game of cat and mouse. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of this game is that it becomes all-consuming—and innovation becomes harder to do when you’re trying to keep up with competition. When Apple launched a tablet, Amazon had to follow suit, even though it undoubtedly had other features on the drawing board, innovations that wouldn’t be launched until at least one other retailer had launched them.
    I think some competition is healthy, because it forces an evolutionary Darwinism of features: if a feature is successful, it will be copied. But untested features languish in unread business requirement documents, and resources that would have gone into building those features get redirected into keeping up with the Joneses.
    Amazon is winning the ebook revolution, but it may lose the war. Competitors like Barnes & Noble and Apple have successfully blurred the lines and proven that they can provide a great media experience, so Amazon’s brand matters less in the eyes of readers now. Any tactical advantage Amazon has is primarily related to its deep ties with publishers, ties that are much deeper than those of other retailers, except maybe Barnes & Noble.
    The revolution started with one clunky, four-hundred-dollar device with four shades of gray that could only hold a hundred books, but the war is about all media now, about the convergence of books and audio and video. The war is on as different retailers compete for your attention. Books were once hugely popular, but they have been relegated to a small slice of the media pie. And though book media is still a billion-dollar industry, it’s becoming outranked by TV and movies and audio and video games in per capita media consumption.
    A 2010 Nielsen survey of American households showed that books account for only 3 percent of an average family’s monthly discretionary spending, while music accounts for 5 percent, video games 9 percent, and videos a whopping 29 percent. There’s no room for niche players to succeed at just selling books, which is why the digital retailers are getting into the game with all kinds of media. And now that ebook content is being sold at commodity prices, the true differentiator will ultimately be in the reading experience itself.
    The winner of this war won’t be decided by generals with scale models of battleships and airplanes and tanks on a simulated table. No, it will be decided by designers, by user-interface artists, by people who connect to the humanistic spirit that flourished in the Renaissance as print books gained in popularity. The Renaissance saw the rise of readable fonts, innovations in binding and page layout, and the placement of illustrations. And typographers always experiment, whether with the more lavish encrustations of the Art Nouveau period or the German grid style that emerged in modern times.
    In the end, design matters.
    Spend a weekend in Los Angeles, and then spend a weekend in Seattle, and ask yourself which city you’d rather live in. Seattle started out as a logging town and as a gateway to further riches in the Yukon. Its roots are founded on the exploitation of resources, as if there’s an infinite supply of trees to chop or gold to mine. Historically, Seattle is a city that has drawn