(2013-09-17) Bjarnason Contra Browser Ebook Readers

Baldur Bjarnason thinks Browser Based Ebook Reader-s are doomed, for similar reasons as Google Wave. If the product’s tentpole feature doesn’t directly help the user at the task they’re using the product for, then the product is likely to fail. In Google Wave’s case the tentpole feature was real-time synchronisation and messaging but the products pitched were chat apps and document collaboration. Neither of the major use cases of Google Wave directly benefited from its tentpole feature.

Examples of apps doing it right are ReadMill and AlDiko. Neither of them were released with support for DRM-ed ebooks at launch, a feature many would say were a core requirement for any new ebook reading system. What they did is prove their core value proposition. Readmill proved the value of social highlights and ebook commenting. Aldiko proved the value of their UI and features. Then they iterated on increasing that core value. Not only did they avoid shipping with useless tentpole features at launch, they launched with just enough features to let them prove the core proposal of their app.

The Web Browser is absolutely rubbish at offline, pagination, parallel processing, intensive computation like image processing, security, and complex animation... A browser is really good at rendering scrolling text quickly, with images, decoration, links, and light declarative animation. And it does this on more platforms than I care to count... The way people have been making web-based ebook reading apps is to treat all of the major features of a web browser like liabilities. Once you stop spending most of your engineering effort implementing and constantly repairing a feature or two (pagination and Off-Line) and once you begin to treat the core characteristics of the web as advantages your project is much more likely to succeed. Not guaranteed, just more likely simply by virtue of having more engineering hours to spend on making core tasks awesome. If the core selling points of your web-based ebook reader is that it paginates and works offline—two features that native apps easily do much much better—then you’ve already failed.

What is really holding back web-based ebook readers? There isn’t a need for them.

Once upon a time I would have said that a web-based ereader would be great for the Social Reading thing, but ReadMill proved you don’t need the reading app to be on the web to gain the Social Networking features of a web app. You can divide the responsibilities quite neatly between the native and web app, letting each do what it does best.

One way I can see it succeeding is if you found a specific group of readers who aren’t being served well by existing apps and would benefit from a specialised reading app. A web-based reading app might well be the most effective way to deliver a cross-platform app for that niche.

• I think this last point is important, esp in the context of his previous pieces like 2013-08-08-BjarnasonEbookCognitiveMapping on the need to take EBook-s past the linear Fiction market/process. An Open Source baseline framework for Browser Based Ebook Reader creation could be forked for all sorts of experimental book-oid experiences. (cf Book Server) This also reminds me of some of the "art" web UI work done 10-15yrs ago.