if a computer is going to hyphenate something, it needs to know what language the text is in. This is a job for metadata: electronic books could have an indicator of what language they’re in, and the reader application could hyphenate automatically. But that won’t always help: in the text on the Kindle screen, for example, der Depperte isn’t English and wouldn’t be recognized as such. A human compositor could catch that; a computer wouldn’t guess, and would have to default to not breaking it. The same problem will happen with proper names.

I can see why this is the case. It’s a difficult problem to solve, so, in that great tradition of computer programming, a solution becomes the solution because the problem-solvers aren’t end users themselves. I don’t think these e-book readers will take off until someone seriously studies the problems of reading on these things and takes the time and effort to offer some thoughtful solutions.

It’ll still cost $300.

Mark does make a couple of interesting comments though:

I’d like to question why [Google Books and the Sony Reader] dominate publishers’ thoughts so much. Neither, it seems to me, need necessarily fundamentally alter the publishing business and before either does totally change the way publishers have to work there is a long road to travel.

I tend to agree with this. I don’t think the digital future of publishing is moments away, and I still believe that the book as book will survive, with a plethora of different ideas—instant pod, ebooks, things we have yet to even think of—also existing. Eventually the industry will focus on using technology to figure out the best way of distributing its product—of reaching readers in ways outside of the current distribution model. This will be especially true for books that fall outside of the mainstream, that aren’t best-sellers, that aren’t sold in Wal*Mart.

Although I’m personally resistant to eReaders, it sounds the technology is almost there . . .

I’m about as book mad as they come, and I’m interested in good technology. The Reader isn’t going to change my book reading and book buying habits yet, but it won’t have to improve that much before I start getting very interested.