Why do ebooks often mimic the layout of the printed page?
I was recently editing a novel destined to be published primarily in e-book form, and made a list of pre-press instructions, to be followed when the final text is agreed upon. Some of these instructions were only needed because the text mimics the printed page, sometimes to the extent of having columns and fully-justified text.
All the e-books I've read use pages. The text is laid out more or less like it would be on a printed page. Why is that? Why not use scrolling text?
There are some advantages to laying out text like this: White space at the end of a chapter is a powerful indicator to the effect that we're done with this bit. Text looks professional and classy when it's laid out on a page.
Why is this done? Is it just because users expect it? Or is there a deeper reason?
4 answers
By doing a "flip page" style of feature in ebooks, it allows the reader a chance to catch their breath. Try this sometime. Get two copies of the exact same book (preferably in the public domain). Read one formatted for an e-reader, and the other in-line. You'll notice very quickly that with the in-line text, you lose your place easily, your eyes tire quicker, and you may become extremely discouraged reading what seems to be an unending march of text up your screen. Ebook formating on the surface seems to be mostly aesthetic, but there is a large chunk of psychological tricks that help keep us interested and reading the text long after we would have given up otherwise.
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Nathan raises an excellent point. WIth scrolling text, you need to put in extra effort to track where you've stopped and where to start reading again. This may not seem like a lot of mental effort, but it's small things like that which tire the reader's "eyes" - a metaphor of course, it's really the brain which is tired from doing all that needless searching. There is also the fact that most ebook readers don't have refresh rates fast enough for smooth animations.
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It has been my experience that GUI's try to make it easy, and familiar for End Users. In web design, we try stuff that is imaginative and forward-thinking, yet still we code for familiarity: The navigation bar goes in a familiar place, the left and right side bars are scanned for tools.
As traditional books have been around for ages, developers assume that people want the "familiar flip of the page" that says this is how many pages I've read. How many of us, when we are putting our books down, tilt the book up to look at the binding edge to see how far we've gotten. The flip is user friendly!
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I think the theories about eye strain is completely valid and may have been part of the thought process. That said, let's not forget that many people are still not sold on the e-book experience. Keeping it familiar will help ease the pain of switching for the uninitiated or reluctant.
When computers shrunk to the size of a microwave and could theoretically be put in someone's kitchen, it wasn't until they added the metaphor of a desktop (with all the fancy icons that entailed) that massive adoption started to happen. People get familiar with a particular process or methodology and can't imagine switching from it.
Several times (because this is a debate I have a lot), people have told me they don't want to buy an e-reader because they like to physically turn the page or need the smell of the paper. I always laugh and say that's the same reason I can't get rid of my horse and buggy (it's just a more visceral experience). I also ask them how many blogs they read in a day and why they don't print them out before they read them.
Just as the metaphor we use to interact with computers is changing (i.e. touchscreen tablets), the metaphor we use to read e-books may change. But people need to be eased into it first.
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