ebookporn

Joe Wikert talks about Semi-Linear and their Citia iPad app. Along the way he distills these glittering nuggets about how digital books should be able to reinvent reading. ~ eP

“…we have dozens, maybe hundreds of books waiting to be read.” — Yes! Not only do I have way too many ebooks queued up, waiting for me to get to, I’ve got five times as many samples of ebooks I’ve downloaded and would like to read.

“…we believe some of the world’s best ideas are overlooked because we’re too busy to find them.” — Ah, the discoverability problem. It’s only going to get worse, folks. Citia has a terrific sharing feature that’s unlike anything you’ve seen before. You can quickly and easily share the most granular piece of a product via email, Twitter or Facebook. 

“…ebooks are like putting radio on television.” — This is similar to what I’ve been saying about how the current state of ebooks is like early TV, where most shows were nothing more than radio programs in front of a camera. The point is that 99.99% of ebooks today are nothing more than quick-and-dirty ports of print to ebook. We’ve got to go digital-first in our product development if we’re going to break free of the shackles of print.

“…ebooks should be able to adjust for prior knowledge.” — I love this point. IOW, as I read, my reading app learns to customize my future reading experience. Don’t force me to read the same thing over and over if I’ve already consumed it. This will be an important feature of dynamic ebooks in the future.

“I have new media habits but old media tastes.” — This was a great quote by Linda in the AllThingsD video embedded below. I’m in the same boat. I’ve bought into the gadgets and platforms of today but I still like reading longer-form content from yesterday. Citia lets you bring these two worlds together.