ux strategy, architecture & design

I buy a lot of books: paper books. Hardcover and paperback books. Books for work; books for learning; books for entertainment; books for escape. Today I spent $260 on books – 9 in total.

But I don’t own an e-book reader, although I love the idea of having my library of 400+ books available on one little device. And here’s why…

I’ll buy an e-book reader when:

• The reader has wireless internet connectivity built-in
• I can buy books directly from the reader; none of this business of downloading to a computer and syncing across. A little like buying music for my iPod Touch.
• The text of the book is presented as text, not PDF; and not an image. I should be able to change font size and the typeface; copy words, sentences, paragraphs etc;
• I can search the text of the book;
• I can highlight a word and execute a search on Wikipedia or Google or Yahoo! or MSN;
• I can visit the website that’s been created for the book;
• I can publish my book library to a site, complete with reviews, comments etc and engage in a discussion with others about books that I’ve read, or thinking of reading. This might be as an application in Facebook, or something new.
• I can annotate books and add tags
• I can subscribe to online journals, magazines, and RSS feeds – including newspapers – and read them on the device.
• The reader is a full colour screen.
• I can ‘loan’ my copy of a book to a friend by transferring it to their reader. If I do that, it’s no longer on my reader. This could also act as a way to give people Gifts.
• I can organize my books by Author, Genre, or title; and I can search across my entire collection for “books that contain Linden Avery” and those will be returned to me.

What would you like to see in an e-book reader? And what do you think of my ideas above?