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Physical Books May Offer Better Reading Comprehension than Ebooks

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This has been my experience, and it’s good to hear that science may be bearing this out. Here’s a key quote from a brief article on this subject:

“Some scientists believe that our brain actually interprets written letters and words as physical objects—a reflection of the fact that our minds evolved to perceive things, not symbols,” writes Carr. “The physical presence of the printed pages, and the ability to flip back and forth through them, turns out to be important to the mind’s ability to navigate written works, particularly lengthy and complicated ones. We quickly develop a mental map of the contents of a printed text, as if its argument or story were a voyage unfolding through space. If you’ve ever picked up a book that you read long ago and discovered that your hands were able to locate a particular passage quickly, you’ve experienced this phenomenon.”

The question for me is whether there’s a way to be able to replicate this phenomena with e-books. I haven’t found one yet, but perhaps there is.

The 5 Characteristics of Ideas that Spread

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A great article at the 99U. The five characteristics are:

  1. Relative advantage
  2. Compatibility
  3. Complexity
  4. Trialability
  5. Observability

Read the whole thing.

And for those who want to go deeper on how ideas spread, I would recommend:

  1. Unleashing the Ideavirus, by Seth Godin (a classic and still the best).
  2. PyroMarketing: The Four-Step Strategy to Ignite Customer Evangelists and Keep Them for Life, which you need to read carefully in order to truly get, but adds important details not in Godin’s book. It’s by Greg Stielstra, who oversaw marketing for numerous best sellers at Zondervan, including The Purpose Driven Life, and clearly knows what he is talking about.

Crossway Impact: Rewards with a Mission

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I’m excited about Crossway Impact, the new rewards program with Crossway Books.

I like this program because it not only offers readers several annual benefits, but also enables you to send 5% of the money you spend to a ministry of your choice. This is a helpful variation on the one for one idea, pioneered by places like TOMS Shoes (which gives one pair of shoes to someone in the developing world for every pair that you buy), because, in the very act of making your purchase, you are able to make an impact beyond your purchase.

So, way to go to Crossway for doing this. (And, if you can’t guess, I would suggest designating your 5% to go to Desiring God — but any of the ministries they offer would be a good choice!)

Here’s the description from the Crossway site:

Here at Crossway, we’ve been thinking of better ways to serve our readers and partner with like-minded ministries.

That’s why we’ve created Crossway Impact—a rewards program for readers who want to invest their resources wisely—buying books AND making an impact.

Crossway Impact is designed to reward our readers with the following annual benefits:

  • 3 FREE books (choose print or e-books from a monthly list which must ship with a purchase of any amount)
  • 25% OFF all your purchases on Crossway.org
  • Free shipping on orders over $50
  • Exclusive monthly offers

Crossway Impact also gives you an opportunity to make a difference with every book you buy by sending 5% of the money you spend at Crossway.org to a ministry of your choice. Now, ministries like Desiring God, The Resurgence, and Revive Our Hearts will benefit right along with you—a real win-win.

For the first year of the program, we’re making these benefits available to as many Crossway readers as possible by letting you determine the value of your rewards (worth at least $40 in free books alone!). The only thing you have to do is name your own membership fee.

It’s as simple as that.

Crossway Impact Members get a year-long discount, free books and shipping, special offers, and the chance to make an impact with every purchase. We hope you’ll join us by signing up today.

The Organized Heart Now Available

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Staci Eastin’s book The Organized Heart: A Woman’s Guide to Conquering Chaos releases today from Cruciform Press.

As a quick aside, I’m excited about Cruciform Press because it is seeking to rethink publishing in light of the new digital environment that we are in. And because it began in the digital era, it is able to build upon these new realities from the start. You can learn more about their vision here.

Back to Staci’s book. Here’s the description:

The fight against chaos is universal, whether it be the outward chaos of disorder and frenzy or the inward chaos of fear and self-criticism. Even if we already know how to do better, something falls apart between our good intentions and getting it done.

Most books on organization just add more rules to your life, whether it be another plan, another calendar, or another method. This book will show you a different, better way that is grounded in the grace of God.

Jesus taught that true change doesn’t come by the addition of more rules, but from the inside out, with a change of the heart that only the gospel can bring. When you identify the heart problems behind the chaos in your life, lasting change can happen. This will not only reduce the stress in your life, but help you be more effective in your service to God.

And here’s what I had to say in my blurb for the book:

“In The Organized Heart, Staci Eastin gives us a refreshing look at organization from an uncommon but incredibly important perspective: the spiritual. This is critical because without understanding the spiritual dimension, all of our productivity techniques ultimately backfire. So instead of focusing on adding new rules, she focuses on the heart. Specifically, she helps show how to avoid letting leisure, busyness, perfectionism, and possessions from becoming idols—and does so in a way that is encouraging and uplifting rather than guilt-driven. This inside-out approach should be helpful to women who are looking to be more organized but know that simply adding on another method is not enough.”

How Magazines Will be Transformed

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Wired has a very good video showing how their magazine will operate on the iPad. This finally seems to provide an electronic experience that is overall better and easier than reading the printed version:

Josh Sowin rightly observes: “This is really exciting from a design & reading standpoint. It will be the experience of reading a magazine, but with the interactivity of the web. It’s going to be a really fun decade.”

(HT: Josh Sowin)

Now This is a Good Vision Statement

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This is what Jeff Bezos said about the Kindle: Amazon’s Wireless Reading Device at a Monday press conference: “Our vision is every book ever printed in any language all available in 60 seconds.”

Here’s why that is a good vision:

  1. It’s simple.
  2. It’s clear.
  3. It takes things all the way: “every book ever printed in any language.” Yes! It’s not “most books” or “95% of books.” To be remarkable, you have to be bold and go the full distance. 95% does not inspire. But 100% — that’s amazing.
  4. Its fulfillment would be a tremendous service to the world.

Now, here’s something not so great:

Some publishers and agents expressed concern over a new, experimental feature that reads text aloud with a computer-generated voice.

“They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

Here we have a recommendation that the kibosh be put on a really great idea because “they don’t have the right to read a book out loud.” This is another example of how innovation is stifled and how good ideas get killed. Sure, there may be issues, but let’s figure them out. Let’s not point to process and say “well, this shouldn’t be done.”

What about the copyright law, though?

An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won’t confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the Kindle, or a device like it, could by means of this audio feature bring great access to books into societies with currently low literacy rates? In other words, such a device could perhaps make it possible for those who can’t read to still “read” some great books by listening to them via the text-to-speech technology. And what if everyone was given one?

Someone could say “well, you would run into problems with recharging those devices because electricity would probably not be reliable or available, and beyond that if the literacy rate is this low, probably food and water are higher priorities. Also, people just might not be interested in that.”

Well, good points. But the way forward is not to then stop and give up on the idea (whether this one or any other), but figure out if there is a way to do it which overcomes the obstacles. Maybe not. But don’t kill ideas too early. At the very least, exploring them could lead to something different, more workable — and better.