Why do we read?
Why do we read?
The answer for some of us seems simple: we can’t not read. It’s a part of our lives, a part of us, and we wouldn’t be who we are if we didn’t.
However, if you are a marketer, that’s not a good enough answer.
Sure, you can say that you read for entertainment, for relaxation, for knowledge…but we have other ways to get those.
I’m an omnivorous input consumer: TV, movies, radio, apps, books, magazines, conversation, food packages, watching animals. I want a lot happening, and I want to think about it and experience and share my insights about it with other people.
If you are looking at marketing a device or content, though, you want to know: why should we include books?
There is a cost to everything you include. It’s not necessarily a high cost, but a screen that is good at showing you Star Wars or playing Angry Birds just doesn’t have the same goals as a screen that is display Dostoevsky or Doc Savage.
They’ll need to understand why we choose reading over other forms of input if we want them to continue to include it as an option.
I think I know why, and some features being offered to us go directly against it.
I read because it is the most direct form of input I can get. The words create concepts, and my concept of them and the author’s are somewhat similar.
You can’t have a face-to-face conversation with someone and not have who they are influence how you perceive it. If your Significant Other says something to you and a stranger says the exact same thing, you process it differently. If a child said something and someone who was 100 said it, you would evaluate it as two different statements.
In a book, the words are the words.
I think that’s the key thing. I don’t even like fancy fonts. I think italics and bolds, even though I use them sometimes in this blog, are added special effects.
I’m a big movie fan, but you are being given multiple channels of information: the sound, the actors’ bone structure, the lighting…and somewhere in there are the words.
We don’t have that with a typical novel.
I read what you say and I think what I think and feel what I feel.
You don’t feel it for me.
That ties into why I prefer text-to-speech to audiobooks (unless I’ve already read the book). I want to interpret what the words mean myself: I don’t want the actor to do it for me. I like that I hear the same voice in all my e-books in the car: I don’t want it to be that I am judging what the book means because I didn’t like the delivery of a line. If I”ve already read the book, I’ve already processed it once: then the additional inputs can be fun.
Reading isn’t easy: that may be why some people don’t like doing it. It’s also why you hit a quantum leap point when you are learning to read (whether it’s your first language or an additional one). At some point, you become able to read without thinking about the mechanics…you move into that zone of pure ideas.
I also think that’s why many typos in an e-book bother some people so much. It gets them back to thinking about something other than the book (“How could they make a mistake like that?” “Oh, it looks like it thought a small “l” was a “1” every time.”).
When you are sight-reading, you actually shift your mind into an altered state. You can experience what something is like, even if that thing never really happened. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t visualize when I read, but that doesn’t lessen that part of the experience for me.
Sight-reading puts the book first, and the world second. As I’ve mentioned, I can read and watch TV and have a talk with someone at the same time. However, which of these three take precedence? I’ll be looking at the book 90% of the time. I may glance up at the TV, or look at the person from time to time, but the book is my focus…the others are background. I want that background very much, and that seems to be the case with about 15% of people who express a preference (you can see that in this earlier post). If you saw me, though, you’d say I was reading with the TV on…not that I was watching TV with a book in my hands.
I read because I want to immerse myself in the ideas.
That should give marketers a rule of thumb: if it takes away from the words being in the foreground, it won’t enhance reading.
I don’t think video, audio, and live chat are what most serious readers want. I do want them, by the way…for when I’m not reading seriously. 😉 That might be after I’ve finished a book, and then I want to share that experience with someone else. It might be for non-fiction, where you are trying to understand a concept more than have a fluid experience.
I don’t think instant messaging and incoming calls are what serious readers want, either.
You might be thinking, “What about the lookup dictionary? Do you think that gets in the way?”). The lookup dictionary is a help for readers. Not understanding what a word means takes you out of that altered state. To continue, you may need to understand that word…it might be essential to your brain creating the right experience for you. Leaving your book to go get a dictionary, look up a word, and then come back is far more disruptive than holding your finger on it for a second (or moving your 5-way next to it).
The same thing can be said for Wikipedia lookup.
So, gadget builders: we want e-books. We don’t want books to become movies or games. We want to experience the words as the words…keep it simple. If something gets in the way of reading the words, like the font is too small or we don’t know what a term means, feel free to fix that. If we are in the experience and you take us out of it, we aren’t going to like it.
That, at least, is my feeling on it. What do you think? Why do you read? Why should a tablet maker go to the time, expense, and effort to make the device friendly for long form reading…in your opinion? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
I Love My Kindle 