Let them have e-textbooks

Delmio.com (MCT) - Amazon.com's Kindle e-book reader continues to give rise to speculation on how we will digest books in the future. In a guest viewpoint in this week's Wall Street Journal, for example, author Steven Johnson looked at how the "digital-books revolution" might change the very way we read and write.

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Johnson talked about having an "a-ha" moment relating to the "great promise and opportunity" in the transformation to digital formats.

As someone with two daughters in college, I've just had my own "a-ha" moment: Why aren't we seeing more digital textbooks?

Once, my older daughter asked me to stand in a line at her school, where students go to "sell back" their books. I walked in with about $500 worth of textbooks and walked out with about with $16 cash. The alternatives: Haul the books home knowing they would never be opened again, or simply throw them away.

Sometimes I wonder where all these used books go. While information does constantly change, does the 7th edition of some textbooks really differ that much from the 8th edition?

It doesn't matter whether you choose to use a Kindle or some other e- reading device. What it should come down to is this: What is the best deal for students?

The university press, in particular, can make a difference. College textbooks are the products of both commercial publishing houses and university press operations.

Recently, in announcing a move to almost all digital publishing, the University of Michigan Press pointed out that digital books of the future would emphasize interactive components including hot links, graphics, 3D animation and video. U-M Press held out the promise for students to get more, as authors communicate subtleties through various multimedia options.

It's hard to say where the future of the novel is going. Some of us still like to curl up on a chair with printed pages we can touch and turn.

Textbooks aren't like that. Most universities now have digital processes and products in place.

So what are we waiting for?

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A note on author J.G. Ballard, who died Sunday at age 78 after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer:

Ballard was best known for "Empire of the Sun" and "The Kindness of Women," both fictionalized autobiographies. "Empire of the Sun," an international best seller, related to his childhood in a Japanese internment camp outside Shanghai. Director Steven Spielberg later made it into a film.

Great Britain's Telegraph described Ballard as having an "uncanny feel for the dark undercurrents of modern life," and on a personal level, being as kind and generous as his fiction was eerie and hostile.

HarperCollins canceled plans to publish Ballard's most recent project, "Conversations," when it became clear the author was too ill to continue. The book was to reflect Ballard's conversations with British oncologist Jonathan Waxman.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Diane Evans is a former Knight Ridder columnist and is now president of DelMio.com, a new interactive online magazine on books for writers and readers.

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