E-Book Readers with a Natural Touch

Reading should be comfortable. When you read a novel, it entertains, it touches your emotions. When you read technical literature, it excites, but can be strenuous. In most cases reading is a delightful thing. And in those cases when it is not, it should be most comfortable. Paper books can offer that comfort.

Unfortunately, e-books are not that way. They are like those ugly ones, which are made of metal or plastic and offer no natural touch at all. (In fairness I have to say, that I haven’t held one in my hands yet, but their looks seem to speak enough about them.)

But let’s face it, paper books are not really comfortable, too. At worst they are heavy, unhandy and need too much space on a shelf or in your bag. And they are far from powerful. They only provide the information that they were given when they were printed. Even if this information is already outdated. You cannot link to somewhere else, you cannot get more information about a specific part, you cannot search them for a term, you cannot leave a comment for others in it. 

So, we need e-book readers,

• that feel and smell like books, 
• that you can sketch and write upon like a real book, 
• that you just hold to a book in a book store (let’s call it “information store”) to get its contents,
• that you can unfold to enlarge the display,
• that weigh less than a small pocket book and
• that you can leave comments in for others to read in their e-book readers.

You could even have different e-book readers for different purposes: One with a hard cover and bleached paper for your novels, one with a soft cover and perfectly white paper for your technical literature and one with a leather cover for your notes.

I’m aware, that existing e-book readers cover part of these features. But none of them seem to try to offer a natural and comfortable feel. Let’s hope they will.