“Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food.”
― Douglas Adams

 

What Readers Need vs. What Devices Can Do

In this excellent article Peter Meyers Rethinks how to pick ebook enhancements and breaks it down to five areas of opportunity: Comprehension, Memory, Interpretation, Relevance, and Extraction & Action. ~ eP

Most ebook experiments do a better job of showing off our devices rather than solving specific reader problems. We get video extras, web links, piped in Twitter feeds. Problem is, these “enhancements” often answer the wrong question: what can we add? In an age of Information Overload, readers don’t need more; they need help. A video of battle footage may be fun to watch, and a simple way to add what’s not possible in print. But what students of World War Two often struggle with is much more mundane: remembering key events for that upcoming test or prepping for an essay they’re writing.

Rather than starting from what the iPad or EPUB 3 makes possible, we should instead think about where print fails to solve readers’ needs…

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