TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for 2003

By David Rothman

The eBook Community list, the town square of e-bookdom, will be eight years old on January 5.

Jon Noring moderates and says TeBC has 1,970 members and is adding a few more each day. Members include everyone from e-book newbies and garage publishers to industry veterans at companies such as Palm Digital Media and Xerox.

Among general-interest e-book lists, TeBC is the most prestigious and probably the oldest as well. It started out as the “eBook-List” (not to be confused with the current e-books list, which Jon does not run).

When Jon announced the creation of TeBC under the original name, guess what was the first of his sample topics? Format-related issues! And the second sample was even more specific: “Should a ’standardized’ electronic book format be developed for the long-term future? Is it even possible?” His feelings today? Emphatically yes! I like those priorities.

Happy birthday, TeBC! And best wishes to all our readers in ‘04!

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Funny. The “E-books and docs” tab seems to have vanished from my Amazon.com pages as best I can determine. On the other hand, I’m still able to limit my search to e-books if I use the selector at the left of the page. So, Amazon, what’s up? Are you playing down your e-bookstore for the moment–or just saying, “A book is a book”? Or maybe in the midst of some virtual remodeling?

Detail: I’ve left a message with Amazon for the lowdown here. Anyone know more?

(Via the e-books list.)

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Even William Goldman would agree that not all recent movies stink.

One of the best is director Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. Based on a book with a similar title, it’s about a master forger in the 1960s, who, if a young hacker today, would be a brilliant social engineer and perhaps a great coder, too.

This teenaged high school dropout didn’t just forge $2.5 milion in checks. He also passed himself off as a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, you name it, including, just as the FBI was trying to arrest him, a Secret Service agent. The feds eventually threw the book at Frank W. Abagnale, pictured below as a middle-aged author, lecturer and fraud-prevention consultant; but he atoned brilliantly through his work for the FBI and the financial services industry.

Abagnale as a reverse social engineer for the good guys?

So here’s the deal for the e-book business. Isn’t it just possible that either pro bono or for much less than he charges international banking empires, Abagnale could help come up with a good nonproprietary system of DRM Lite? No need for Abagnale to do the coding. Rather he could at least help the Open eBook Forum or an equivalent deal with the human factors here. At the same time an e-book organization could set up a focus group of readers and find out just what they would and would not consider convenient. Needless to say, the OeBF could also consult with accomplished hackers and top security experts, such as Bruce Schneier, who has warned against the perils of proprietary encryption, where not as many people can kick the tires. Maybe even Winston Smith, himself a bright high school dropout, who has outsmarted security specialists in an actual e-reader context but without monetary rewards in mind, would show some interest here.

Would the above efforts create a crackproof DRM? No, of course not. We’re talking about DRM with consumer convenience in mind. But at least this approach would be far better than the heavy-handed proprietary ones from the software industry. We already know that DRM systems from Adobe and Microsoft and Palm Digital Media are crackable. So why should e-book publishers pay anything extra for them? Ditto for e-book formats themselves; best to wave good-bye to proprietary standards and go with a refinement of the OeBF’s own Open eBook Publication Structure. With standardization of formats and well-integrated DRM at the consumer level, e-books could actually be more secure–not just because of the kick-the-tires factor, but also because updates would be less of a hassle.

If you want star quality…

Again, let me emphasize that Frank Abagnale would be just one of many people involved, but chances are he could make more than his share of contributions. From a cost-benefit perspective, I doubt he’d be that affordable for individual sellers of e-book software–considering the pathetic $10M in annual sales of actual e-books. But if the OeBF approached him and said, “Look, here’s a good deed you can do for the entire book world, including libraries,” Abagnale just might oblige. What’s more, his efforts might also be useful to the movie and recording businesses, whose DRM efforts the OeBF has been tracking. It’s no small coincidence that I began this item with mention of a movie. Yo, Jack Valenti! If you want star quality in a theft-prevention expert, Frank Abagnale just might be your man.

Just a reminder: I myself am not the biggest fan of DRM, but recognize there are certain situations, such as legal file-sharing or library use, where it could be handy. If nothing else, this would be a nice security blanket for e-book publishers insistent on it. They’d actually be far better off than trusting Adobe, Microsoft and Palm Digital Media–the companies whose flawed and proprietary DRM has given us the costly Tower of eBabel.

If not Abagnale: If he isn’t interested, remember there are other well-known experts in fraud-prevention whose participation would show publishers that the OeBF or a similar group was dead-serious about protection of intellectual property.

Detail: While I’d hope that Abagnale could donate some time or at least discount it heavily, I still believe that techie standard-setters–ordinary folks with gas and groceries and no mega incomes–should be paid a decent amount for their efforts it all possible. Even token payments would help. Ironic, isn’t it? E-book publishers understandably want intellectual proprety protected–under the premise that work has value. Well, the standard setters’ time is worth something, too. If nothing else, this would consideraby speed up the standards process.

A TeleRead angle: Needless to say, well-stocked national digital library systems–with affordable subscription and purchase plans for people outside the countries with such systems–would be one way to help reduce the incentive for e-book piracy. Interestingly, I can see a possible role here for one of Abagnale’s clients, NuTech Solutions, or other companies that specialize in predicting business risks. In the case of TeleRead, the risk is that large but fair payments for best-sellers would be budget budgers without suitable precautions. A NuTech-style company could help refine already-mentioned possiblities, such as publishers paying money up front and along the way to qualify for maximum revenues.

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While PDAs can be great for electronic books in many cases, I’ve now got even more reason to question the e-book industry’s love of this platform.

In dealings with PDA buyers, some Ernestine imitators at Dell are slavishly plagiarizing in real life from Lily Tomlin.

Relying on outfits like Dell is a great way to screen out booklovers who aren’t committed techies or expert bureaucracy-fighters. Customers had better learn to deal with morons in departments with Orwellian names like “customer care.”

Scary even for geeks

Mine isn’t the only horror story inspired by Dell and other PDA vendors. Geek.com has some beauts.

I’d love to see the outfits like the AARP, NEA, ALA and maybe even library systems arranging for mass purchases of better machines for e-books–such as tablets. From Dell? Maybe. But only with enough clout on the consumers’ side. I can see a role for book chains, too. As flawed as p-book stores can be, their service is stellar by computer industry standards.

Ideally the tablets could display e-books better and hopefully be sold and swapped out–if defective–in a more consumer-friendly way. While powerful color-screened tablets aren’t affordable for the masses, that day will come soon enough. Meanwhile consumers are in PDA Hell.

Existing PDA sellers can’t hack it

The existing PDA biz just can’t hack it. Would you believe, PDA sales actually fell slightly in the third quarter of ‘03 while PC sales went up. That’s partly because cell phones are the craze and the PDA makers aren’t as inventive as before–but I suspect that the public is also put off by the way the vendors people take consumers for granted, despite the fact that the machines are personal digital assistants.

All too often PDA owners end up in the “computer boot camp” portrayed in the commercials for Dell. Except that the worst drill sergeants often aren’t techies at all. They’re just business-side morons who can say little more than “That’s not our policy.”

Mention “customer loyalty”–I own two Dell desktop bought directly from the company–and the Ernestines and male equivalents at Dell will come up with gems such as: “That’s not a factor.” No irony. They mean it. Seriously.

Oh, the fun Joseph Heller could have had with this.

Telephone fiends

Dell’s “customer care” bozos balked when I kept trying to send them $120 for a two-year “advanced customer exchange” policy on a refurb Axim X5 for which I had paid $130 and shipping. I like the jog lever. Great for moving through e-books. Wonder if the new models would be as good.

So far I haven’t succeeded at getting Dell to take my money despite the mini-killing that the company could make off me. Why? Because I was evil enough to have bought the refurb from a well-known discounter, which understandably doesn’t want to reveal its sources to Dell (although I’m absolutely convinced they’re legit).

As caring as Ernestine on a bad day

If my experiences are representative, is it any wonder why PDAs are not selling as well as they should? Now that I own a Dell PDA, the ‘tude is: “We don’t have to care. We’re the computer company.” Dell said it might take as long as 15 business days just to get the change of name processed, assuming it was even granted. And that would be before I sent the existing machine in for an exchange.

Oh, and the much-ballyhooed Dell techies did not quite come through either. While ActiveSync on my Dell still isn’t working perfectly, it is back in service again after more than a little troubleshooting on my part. I presently believe that buggy software from Dell or Microsoft, not the actual hardware, has caused my problems. They beset me after I did a Microsoft security update on my Optiplex with which my Axim now communicates when earth and Mars are properly aligned.

Someone at a large federal agency reports similarly dismal results from Dell. I wonder if the CIA deals with ‘em. Perhaps Dell’s customer worry supervisor will be terminated someday with extreme prejudice. I’d send people to HP and IBM, but still can feel the sting of old memories from the former–when the techies kept denying that my hard disk was defective, right up to the time it crashed.

Rx if your organization deals with Dell:
Mafia-style procurement officers

Just the same, the benefits of the technology are worth it, considering the joys of e-books–all the more reason for libraries to hold PDA classes.

Plus, libraries and other mass buyers can sic Mafia-style procurement officers on Dell and the like, with heavy penalties for nonperformance.

Still, that won’t help me now. Sad, isn’t it? Dell won’t even let itself gouge me. My friendly suggestion is for Michael Dell to bring back the “Dude, you’re getting a Dell” guy and put him in charge of “customer care.” He might be pushy, but never as obnoxiously anal as the customer worry specialists.

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Will Palm Digital Media do a Smartphone reader for e-books? On Monday I raised the possibility that commercial rivalries with Microsoft might get in the way–another argument for a Universal Consumer Format.

Without discussing the UCF issue, Craig Froehle, a University of Cincinnati professor, who founded the company that became Memoware, kindly shared his own thoughts on Palm and SmartPhones after seeing my Saturday mention of the topic. He himself said Palm-Microsoft rivalries would get in the way.

At the same time, he disagrees with me about phones’ potential for e-book reading. I think that screens are already sufficient for addicts who need serious e-book fixes, and Mobipocket feels likewise. Craig isn’t so sure. And now, here’s Craig’s full letter:

A point of clarification on your story.

There’s insufficient motivation for anyone to generate a Palm Digital Media reader for Microsoft Smartphones.

Palm Digital Media is now owned by PalmGear HQ, a software archive company that focuses *exclusively* on Palm OS devices.  Plus, Palm OS has its own crop of “smartphones” (e.g. Treo 600, Kyocera 7135, Samsung SGH-i500, etc.).  So, the company that controls Palm Digital Media’s format and reader apps isn’t likely to support a competitor’s platform.  Granted, they might sell a few more ebooks, but I doubt that many more. Most smartphones have low-res screens, making the reading experience mediocre at best. Plus, folks haven’t exactly adopted PDA ebook reading overwhelmingly…I cant imagine they will be more receptive to using their phones for that task (especially when battery life is already a major concern with phones).

Also, PalmGear isn’t that big a company, so it’s unlikely that it has the $$ or staff just waiting around ready to be put towards developing an MS Smartphone-compatible reader.

Besides, isn’t Microsoft’s big claim that you write an app once and it works on all the various Windows Mobile devices?  Doesn’t seem very smart for a company that depends on the success of Palm OS to go around supporting products from the behemoth from Redmond.

Anyway, interesting article, but I think it overlooks some of the “market realities” involved.

Further thoughts from me: While tablets are better than PDAs for e-books in many cases, this isn’t universally true. On the go, I much prefer a more compact machine like my Dell Axim. Of course, one of the biggest negative of PDAs is that they’re not treated as true consumer items, but rather require you to deal not only with the technology but also with absolute morons on the business side. See the above item.

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In the early ’90s we said e-books could help reading survive the multimedia onslaught.

Now comes a depressing headline out of Denver: Library books play second fiddle to videos, CDs. Perhaps the Denver library system and others need to borrow a page from teacher Amos Bokros and think about using e-book-related tech in new ways–just as he did to reach book-hating teenagers.

In fairness to the Denver library, it is trying out netLibrary; and, on the Web, the system promotes its electronic text resources well. But that’s not enough.

netLibrary, for example, is obviously a hassle for Denver residents to use. Would you believe, you can browse an e-book only in “15 minute intervals”? And you can check out an e-book from home for only 24 hours. Hardly the best test of e-books!

I also wonder how much help the Denver library system is giving e-book users. Wouldn’t hurt to have a class on PDA use, for example, with e-books in mind. Plus, libraries could arrange to sell memory cards with e-books already loaded in–and work with PC and Mac clubs to help install e-book reading software on people’s PDAs. Used PDAs fit for young book-lovers with good eyes–or for others who care more about words than about how they appear on the screen–cost all of $50-$75 or so.

Given the affordability of the technology, Denver libraries and schools could launch joint fund-raising campaigns with e-books and young readers in mind. Together they could work to get kids the gizmos for reading Jules Verne and Doc Savage electronically–in fact, even the Bobbsey Twins. Cost of the just-linked titles: $0. They’re in the public domain and can be reproduced endlessly for free.

Libraries as e-book-promoters

Do-gooder reasons are why I’m interested in e-books for libraries. But if nothing else, the industry needs to consider the marketing potential here. What better place than a library–with its relaxed atmosphere–for readers to befriend the technology? Public-domain books could whet people’s appetite for commercial titles.

Meanwhile, for a preview of a future without a TeleRead-style approach or even the traditional library one, here is an excerpt from the Denver Post:

The ominous news for book fans is the same: As budget-squeezed public libraries rush to buy DVDs for an insatiable public, branches must act more like multimedia centers and less like temples of the printed page.

The relentless boom in information captured on DVD, videotape, CD and cassette tape–not to mention rivers of data flowing into homes on high-speed Internet–has rapidly transformed the way people use libraries. In Denver, 53 percent of all circulation now comes from the audio-visual collections, led by pop music on CDs, Hollywood hits on DVD, and bestselling books on tape.

I’m all in favor of multimedia when used well–for example, the lending of training videos or adaptations of the great literary classics. And video within bounds for simple recreational use is fine. But isn’t Denver overdoing it? How much of this is to keep up the demand for library services to justify budgets and retain library jobs? With so much money devoted to videos, we’re not just talking about the use of them to lure children to libraries and sell them on books. From the Post again:

Most librarians say they aren’t inclined to waste time waxing nostalgic about books. Library credos, local and national, proclaim the goal of providing information to all, with no bias in favor of the book.

“The library is about people,’ said Ann Cress, associate director of public services at Jefferson County. “We try to build the collection that our population wants.’

“So many of us are attached to the text, and the paper, and the binding. It’s so tactile,’ said Beth Elder, senior collection specialist for Denver Public Library. “But many of our customers are leaving text behind.”

Time for clueful librarians and the e-book industry to stand up? I’ve already suggested more hand-holding to acquaint readers with e-book technology (and content, too!). What’s more, can’t libraries at least try harder to tie e-books and p-books in with the DVDS and the rest? That at least would help keep reading alive in the p-book era and especially help open up possibilities for public-domain e-books from the free Project Gutenberg collection. Via Gutenberg, libraries could do something much better than just circulate books in the traditional sense–namely, give them away.

E-books in the right contexts

Also, while waiting for the technology to get still better and for the format and DRM questions to be settled, more libraries need to dabble with the lending out of e-book readin hardware to encourage people to get their own. That would be one way to determine which kids really could benefit from their own PDAs.

Whatever the age, context is all. Couldn’t elderly library users benefit from the ability of the technology to blow up letters on the screen? Too, how about the use of special technology for special needs? In his recent essay for us, Amos Bokros told how he was finally reading at a nice clip now–thanks to a mix of digitized text, speech synthesis and highlighted words.

Yes, technology like this and e-books in general will require librarians to introduce readers to it. No shortcuts. Same with paper books, in fact. Enough librarians need to be around to connect the right library users (”patrons” in libraryese) with the right books, whatever the medium. Those are legitimate ways to justify library budgets. But competition with video stores? Absolutely not! This is Carnegie in reverse. Amazon.com for the elite, second-rate Blockbuster for the masses. TeleRead, anyone?

(Found via LISnews.)

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The PDA is the e-book platform now. But could electronic publishers and their techie overlords at places like Palm Digital Media be betting too heavily on it–without nurturing some more-consumer-friendly alternatives?

Palm Digital Media and Microsoft won’t even bother right now with e-book-reading software for the Microsoft Smartphone. But wait! Aren’t a heck of a lot more cellular phones being sold than PDAs? And won’t the displays on phones be growing in size and quality, given all the built-in digital cameras? Mightn’t other ergonomical factors improve as well? Beyond that, phones could make it much easier for people to download books than having to put up with the present challenges of buying books on the Web. The Net is my favorite way of getting a book; but not everyone feels the same.

If nothing else, remember that phones are consumer devices without all the complexities that PDAs impose on nongeeks who want to do little more than just keep lists of phone numbers and appointments. Yes, phones do have layers of features. But the basic ones are rather accessible to all.

The old Gemstar machines were also easy. Alas, however, the greedster Henry Yuen killed them off with his love of obnoxious DRM and a proprietary format.

I can’t wait for the next crop of dedicated e-book-reading machines to come along, as well as affordable Tablet PCs, just so the former devices are multi format, an impossible dream if the Yuen mindset prevails.

Oh, and incidentally, this pro-KISS rant isn’t just theoretical. The word from Dell tech support is that my Axim PDA is indeed dying. I’m not sure. Instead I may have been done in by complications from a Microsoft security upgrade to my desktop; perhaps that’s the real reason ActiveSync has gone south. The PDA life, even for an old PC hand, just isn’t as simple as it’s cracked up to be.

And to think that so many techies in the e-book industry are haughty enough to insist on both a format war and oppressive DRM–adding those book-related annoyances to the still-abundant uncertainties of PDA technology!

Thought: I suspect that impatience with the Smartphone market is a big reason why both Palm Digital Media and Microsoft haven’t done reading software. But could PDM also have another reason–some prejudices against the Microsoft, maker of a rival operating system for PDAs (PDM or at least its parent, PalmGear, supports the Palm OS and may very possibly be hoping for a variant to thrive in the PDA-phone market)? That’s yet one more argument for publishers to push for a nonproprietary e-book format. Books and their human readers shouldn’t be caught in the middle of format and OS wars.

“Open Ink Christmas Carol” update: Perhaps Tuesday or Wedneday.

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Would William Goldman, the scriptwriter behind the movie All the President’s Men and other greats, oppose the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act? I don’t know. But maybe so, if you can extrapolate from Goldman’s theory on creative clustering. Start with a passage in his book Which Lie Did I Tell?

I think the ’90s are by far the worst decade in Hollywood history.

And then, while allowing for the fact that he just may be an old fart opposed to the new, he eventually says:

.…today, in every single art I can think of, is a time of low talent. When I took a modern novel course at Oberlin in 1951, we studied people who had published between 1900 and 1950 who had written something in the year 1927. So we read Dos Passos and Wolfe and Steinbeck and Faulkner and Hemingway and Fitzgerald–not, alas, the same today.

Notice? Goldman and his teachers paid a lot of attention to fellow 20th-century writers.

This would be in line with Goldman’s theory that great writers often come in clusters of time and geography. Yes, Dos Passos, Faulkner, Steinbeck and Hemingway were still alive and writing in 1951 even if they’d already done their best work. They were more tightly clustered with each other at their peak time than they were clustered with 1950s-era writers–but the good vibes lingered. Goldman also notes that “Balanchine had Robbins, that Placido had Luciano, that Chekov and Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and a bunch of other Russians all walked a similar earth.”

Now, think how copyright term extension has lengthened the time it’ll take for young writers to enjoy great writers for free on the Net. “Free” does count. Young or old, writer or nonwriter, people would rather not commit themselves to books based on a few passages or even a sample chapters. Better just to have the whole works for free browsing and full-length reading. That’s the glory of shorter copyright terms and also of using the library model as much as possible with material still under copyright. Yes, we’re talking TeleRead here.

Housekeeping note: “An OeBF Christmas Carol” is still in the works, just not today. Maybe tomorrow or Monday, under the name “An Open Ink Christmas Carol”–a follow-up on our earlier Open Ink item. Meanwhile the happiest of holidays!

Typo department: Yep, caught that “tion” in the original headline.” Sorry.

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The civilian toll continues to grow in the e-book format wars. At least for now, Palm Digital Media won’t release a PalmReader for Microsoft’s Smartphones. Once again, OS-related factors are balkanizing and shrinking the potential e-book market. The lowdown from msmobiles.com:

As we all know, Microsoft smartphones don’t have Microsoft Reader (mistake of Microsoft: Microsoft decided that smartphone users are not reading eBooks), and the only serious eBook reader for Microsoft smartphone is the one from our friends from Mobipocket.com. Unfortunately some people already have several hundreds of Palm Digital Media eBooks and they would like to have PalmReader for Microsoft to read eBooks. Here is what Josh from Palm Digital Media said about this topic to MPx200.org:

We continue to evaluate the smartphone platform for Palm Reader but don’t have any immediate plans for a smartphone version. It is something that we would love to develop and release immediately as the smartphone community is expanding rapidly. But development time and cost are factors that we take into consideration as well.

Oh, well, some believe that Mobipocket, which does make a version for Smartphones, offers a better reader than either PDM or Microsoft. You can also buy Tiny Reader, which nicely reads the Project Gutenberg format and other ASCII, for Smartphones. And sooner or later, if Smartphones are a success, Palm Digital will kick in. But meanwhile an unfortunate message is still coming through: E-books are not real books, not when the whims of the software warriors count more than the satisfaction of (human) readers.

Given the connection with the Tower of eBabel, the Smartphone mess is yet another message to the Open eBook Forum to die and get out of the way. Or as a compromise, the OeBF board could promptly ditch the tainted Gold Sponsor system and arrange for proprietary-format defender Steve Potash to resign as president and for standards work to resume for real and lead to a Universal Consumer Format. Then, when new classes of hardware appeared, such as the Smartphones, e-book buyers wouldn’t suffer to the extent they do now. Nor would the e-book industry itself. Yo, Steve! What do you say? Remember, theoretically, the publishers are your company’s customers. A smooth transition to an OeBF president with a different philosophy would go a long way and turn many of your enemies into friends.

Details: Whether the “Open” eBook Forum continues or not, a new name without the Orwellian baggage of the old one would also help. So would a different executive director–ideally someone who really cares about e-books and at the same time has the right personality for trade-association work. Nick Bogaty, present director, doesn’t. Be nice to him, OeBF. Find him a job where he can happily crunch numbers for the e-book business but not interfere with the growth of those stats.

By David Rothman

“If countries agree to pass DMCA-like laws as part of a treaty,” U.S. “negotiators may offer better terms for exchanging other goods and services.” – CNET story on the acquittal of a Norwegian programmer acquitted of a DVD-related charge.

The TeleRead take: So here’s the big question. Just what trade protections for nonHollywood types are U.S. officials bargaining away in the name of DMCAism? Won’t anyone from the media investigate? Hollywood brags about the money it brings in from overseas, but, in the future, how much of that will be at the expense of other industries? And has anyone done a cost-benefit analysis? Generally I like free trade, but with so many U.S. jobs lost due to it, and with politicians not able to come up with solutions to the jobs-drain, those are not minor issues. Is it Hollywood vs. mill workers in North Carolina or Boeing hands in Seattle?

Related: Meanwhile the outflow of some U.S. programming jobs and other white-collar work goes on–and on. See White-Collar Anger.

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Here are 2003’s top stories in e-books and related areas, as picked by Jerry Justiano at Pocket PC eBooks Watch. I’ll follow up with my own list.

1. Burned Un-nobled: Barnes and Noble decision to close its ebook store.

2. Ooops She did it again: MS Update its protection. Then within a week, it was cracked again with Convert Lit 1.4.

3. Scan Scum Spam: Harry Potter 5 e-books available within days of worldwide release, thanks to the DRM buster Scanner technology.

4. Ooops: She did it again 2: Little Girl being Sued by RIAA for P2P.

5. AMazingone: Mazingo is dead.

The TeleRead take: My own top picks would be (1) evidence that OeBF president Steve Potash sabotaged the e-book standards work of this once-valuable group, which now deserves a quick mercy killing, (2) the Harry Potter piracy and the continued cracking of the Microsoft Reader format, yet more proof of the imbecility of the Draconian DRM pushed by Potash and allies, (3) the lowering of prices of e-books, A Good Thing even though we still don’t have enough of it, (4) the Supreme Court’s unfortunate ruling that Congress could keep extending copyrights, and (5) the RIAA’s war against individual file-sharers, a good “how not to” for e-book publishers.

With an apology for a little vanity, the sixth story would be an article in the Carnegie Reporter–an importance voice within the philanthropic establishment–describing TeleRead as an intriguing alternative to present business and legal models. Like me, the man who wrote it is pro copyright. We just want to see the concept modernized so it survives.

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Amos Bokros, the author of the touching story below, lives in Bradenton, Florida, and has been a TeleRead supporter for years. You can reach him at amos.bokros@verizon.net.

They’re called the VE kids, short for “Very Exceptional Students”–with a hodgepodge of learning disabilities and emotional problems. Some must take powerful drugs to control their rage, or have threatened to bring guns to school.

Not the kids you’d expect to love electronic books. But I know better as a substitute teacher in Sarasota County, Florida.

In fact, I myself am a VE child grown up, and e-books and related technology have already changed my life. I scan the books with special software and then simultaneously hear them and read them–with the computer highlighting the words. Even better, as a disabled person, I can legally download best-sellers from Bookshare.org and skip the scanning process, saving me hours and hours. Same for Project Gutenberg books–free to everyone, disabled or not. I’ve even turned into a bit of a speed demon as a reader, cruising along at up to 450 words per minute. You can think of the technology as like eyeglasses. I’d rather be able to do without it, but with it I can actually read faster than many people without my combination of attention deficit disorder, dyslexia and other challenges.

Now I take my laptop into the classroom and, at every chance, share the technology with my students.

I’ve had the joy of watching students who would rather die than have to read, being captivated by a story of Greek mythology. The students are amazed that they can read a story by themselves 20 or 30 pages long without taking a break. These same students could not or would not read a paragraph by themselves. The students are amazed that they enjoyed and comprehended what they read. I have been particularly happy that many of the most pugnacious students have found this technology a breakthrough–a way to develop both their minds and their self-esteem.

One young African American girl worried at first that her father would tell her that the technology was for “dumb people.”

“What’s dumb,” I said, “is not taking advantage of technology or anything that can help us to learn.”

Let me tell you about an incident that happened recently. I was called one morning to go to a school for students kicked out of other schools or even in trouble with the law. Another teacher and I were to teach a class of three students, and I asked if they would give me any problems.

“No,” she said. “They’ll most likely be sleeping. As long as you don’t wake the students up, they won’t bother you.”

Sure enough, when I got to the class, two of the three students were sleeping. I spoke with the other teacher in the class, and basically she explained the game we played in this school where kids come to this school because they have to and are just waiting till their 18th birthday and no longer need to be legally in school. She reassured me that we were in no danger because the really bad kids had recently been sent off to prison.

I tried talking to the one student who was awake. He apparently tried to shock me with his extracurricular stories which were not appropriate for school. I quickly gave up trying to talk with him. About a half hour later, one of the hall monitors who looked like a bouncer in a rough bar woke the students up and told them it was time to go to gym class. We walked to gym class and the two students who slept in the class room proceeded to continue to sleep during gym. There were other students from other classes in the gym. A few of them started talking with me. After a few minutes it became clear they were all also trying to shock me with all sorts of inappropriate drug and sex talk. I realized that this was going to be a wasted day, but at least I was going to be paid for it.

During a break, I went to my car and got my laptop. When I returned, I set up my laptop with my ear phones and proceeded to do some work.

One student woke up and began staring at me.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I kept tapping away on my laptop while the student watched. He started to talk with me, and we discovered we shared the same birthday and were both from Pennsylvania originally. I was happy that at least the conversation wasn’t about drugs or sex.

He looked at me and said, “I don’t like computers.”

“Why not?” I asked.

His reply was, “Well, for one thing, I can’t read good.”

I looked at him and said, “Would you like to try something?”

He said, “I guess so.”

I got up and asked him to sit in my chair, and I placed the headphones attached to my laptop on his head. I then switched text on my laptop and went to a section of short stories. I explained to him that this was a digital reading program, and that he was about to have a computer read a story to him and highlight the words as it did so. I adjusted the speed of the story and told him I could make the computer read faster or slower if he desired. I also explained that he could stop the program at any time, then resume where he’d left off. He could also have varied the pitch.

He read the story and asked, “Can I read it again?”

“Yes,” I said, and he proceeded to do so–before going on to another story.

I had him reading for about an hour.

He told me that usually when he is confronted by reading he becomes blinded by looking at a sea of words. But here he was able to concentrate on the story and able to read words which were ordinarily difficult for him to comprehend. Another student joined us as we were talking. I talked about my own problems with reading and how I suffered terrible humiliation in school because of my learning disability. He asked me how I was able to go to college if I had a reading disability. I explained that it was difficult and I had to work very hard.

I also explained until recently this type of technology was unavailable–but, had it been available when I was his age, my life might have been substantially different. I’d have spent years and years as a teacher by now rather than having to work in nursing homes and at Wal-Mart. Now scanned books had opened up a world of possibilities.

“Look,” I told both kids, “school basically sucks, but reading can be a lot of fun if you are willing to try.”

He looked at me skeptically, and frankly I wondered if I had helped him. I wrote down for him the names of Bookshare (as a source of electronic books) and TeleRead (which for years has advocated e-books for people in general–but especially for those with learning disabilities).

The school day was coming to a close and I said goodbye to my student and wished him well in his endeavors. He told me he would think about what I had introduced him to. As I left the school that day and went home, I wondered how much effect I had on any students. I hoped that may be I had made a difference in at least one student’s life. But one thing for sure: I’ve never had a more satisfying day of teaching.

I just hope that our schools can catch on to the potential of this technology and others related to electronic books. During World War II the initials “VE” stood for “Victory in Europe.” But maybe, with the right hardware and software available, they can take on another meaning for many special kids: “Victory in the Classroom.”

* * *

The TeleRead take: Needless to say, experiences like Amos’s are exactly why I’m so gung ho on the creation of a Universal Consumer Format that works well with assistive technology. How much better e-books are in many cases than the alternatives! Amos, at least, finds that books on tape require much more of his time than does a mix of synthesized speech and highlighted words. What’s more, in his opinion, books on tape don’t encourage as strong a relationship between written text and cognitive thinking.

Amos also notes the treadmill effect–the speech pulls the students along. Does this mean that read-as-you-see-highlighted-words should replace other forms of reading instruction for special students, including those in the early grades? Of course not. Some educators might even argue that synthesized speech could confuse the children without the proper inflections and other nuances. Still, what do you do when other methods have failed? If nothing else, although reading is the single most important skill in school, do we really want to condemn future Amoses to menial jobs? Better to make assistive technology available–so they can pick up knowledge in subjects ranging from history to science–or maybe even advanced calculus or networking protocols.

And who knows, maybe even people without his disabilities could experiment. The synthesis-highlight combo might even be a standard option in the future with e-book reading software and PDAs.

In case you’re curious, Amos uses Wynn Wizard to scan and read books, as well as read material from the Net. Two other possibilities are Open Book and Kurzweil 1000. Also check out some background from Benetech, the Silicon Valley nonprofit behind Bookshare.– David Rothman