Kids and E-Books

Plenty of e-books have been created with young people—from pre-schoolers to YAs—in mind. Check the "e-books and e-docs" section of the Amazon site and you will see 41 pages of them. But librarians nationwide recognize that this availability has yet to translate into any kind of demand for e-books.

Publishers, for several reasons, have failed to create a market for children's e-books. Take Princess in Love, for example. It's the third volume in Meg Cabot's popular "Princess Diaries" series. It costs $12.95 from Amazon—more than Amazon sells the hardcover copy ($11.19) for—and is available only in Microsoft Reader format, which means it is readable only on Pocket PCs that use Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system. To top it off, it cannot be printed.

That's why e-books haven't caught on. Many of the titles that kids want are too expensive. With printing limited and the whole issue of accessibility on different devices so complicated, most people have thrown up their hands and stuck with web sites, video programs, and print books. The only bright spot seems to be in the pre-K to third grade arena.

Publishers' fear of piracy—their terror at the idea of teens using a "Bookster" to download freely the Harry Potter series—has ironically limited the interest of the book-buying public. The Association of American Publishers and the American Library Association admitted as much in their March 2003 white paper "What Consumers Want in Digital Rights Management." F. Hill Lowinski wrote, "[Digital rights management] technologies need to allow flexible use of content so that the user experience is not frustrating." The report concludes that publishers need to lighten up if they want e-books to succeed—but there's no sign of that happening yet.

This unpopularity in the marketplace translates into big-time unpopularity in public and school libraries. Carrie Guarria, young adult librarian at the Lindenhurst Memorial Library, NY, experimented with e-books for both adults and children two years ago when she purchased an e-book reader device. "The response from our patrons was lukewarm at best but lately has slowed down to practically nothing," she says. "I believe that there was more interest when e-books first came out because they were a new type of technology."

"No families or children have ever asked me about e-books, other than to see that an e-book is available in the catalog," says Cindi Carey, Lacey Branch, Timberland Regional Library, WA. "People want the tactile experience of reading a book."

Numerous librarians echo Carey's statement that people want "the tactile experience of reading a book," but that may have little to do with tradition. It's probably because even young people find reading long passages uncomfortable on a small screen. The resolution of the standard screen of a computer or other device is about 72 to 78 dots per inch (dpi)—too rough and pixilated for easy reading.

Tablet PCs, which look like laptops without keyboards but have 150-dpi screens, are noticeably easier on the eyes. But it probably won't be until computer screens reach resolutions at least as high as that of a laser or high-quality inkjet printer—about 300 dpi—that reading on a screen will be as easy as reading a sheet of paper. This level of screen resolution isn't expected to hit the market until 2005.

It may be picture books and easy readers, books for children below third grade, that offer the best entrée for e-books in the children's market. Two companies—TumbleBooks and Children's eLibrary—offer collections of e-books. The books aren't downloaded but accessed through the company's web sites.

The books from TumbleBooks are converted from existing titles from well-known publishers such as Chronicle Books, Candlewick Press, and Scholastic. According to Ron Zevy, president of TumbleBooks, all its works are still in print, and, notably, many are frontlist titles.

A few of the Children's eLibrary titles, and all of the TumbleBooks titles, are available with read-aloud soundtracks and animation—although more than a few librarians may wonder where, in this format, a "book" ends and a "cartoon" begins. Zevy says that he doesn't consider the TumbleBooks merely kids' videos but rather a flexible product that can be adjusted to meet the needs of very young children through beginning readers. For younger children, the books will play through automatically with sound and video, for older kids it can be set in manual mode.

"We absolutely love them for the primary grades," says David Schuster, library automation manager, Plano Independent School District, TX. "The students can go to the library catalog, find the book they want, and watch and listen." As for usage, Schuster reports that between January and June 2003, Plano students and teachers generated 12,583 hits on the TumbleBooks collection. That's a good start.

Walter Minkel is Technology Editor, School Library Journal