Will Hawkins is a well-known UK-based blogger who serves as editor of Digital Business

TOUCH SCREENS COULD REVOLUTIONIZE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

By Will Hawkins


Multi-touch screens have become, perhaps, the leading feature for mobile phone manufacturers since Apple launched the iPhone. The publishing industry, which has stuck with its primary format of delivery to its customers for centuries, has probably been sparked by the iPhone alone into a frenzy to digitise its products.

The publishing industry is digitising its content to feed the growing demand for eBooks. Booksellers are preparing themselves for a battle for dominance of their preferred reader device such as Amazon with the Kindle 2 and Waterstones, in the UK, with the Sony Reader. But this could prove to be a slow start for eBook retailers with these devices.

None of these devices has a touch screen, and if there was ever a device which needed a touch screen to encourage volumes of customers to buy more digital products then it has to be the eBook reader.

The current generation of eBook reader devices needs to appeal to more people and to enable a more natural interaction with the eBooks than is now possible. Multi-touch technology will make reading an eBook a more intuitive experience for people that are used to being able to touch the pages they are reading in a printed book, to turn a page, earmark or zoom in on details. The current eBook reader devices make use of buttons to enable interaction with the eBook. This is no improvement upon a printed book.

The size of an eBook reader screen will make a huge impact on the number of people taking up reading books from a device. A mobile phone screen for reading an eBook is not a great experience. A multi-touch device which has colour capability and internet connectivity for reading eBooks could transform the publishing industry and its success with digital books.

Let’s hope that 2009, despite the economic challenges, sees multi-touch screen devices coming onto the market to improve upon and excite hundreds of thousands of readers to read eBooks from highly intuitive devices.