Modifying an E-reader for an Older or Low Vision Reader

To surprise my mother-in-law for her 91st birthday, I decided to make an attempt to return to her the gift of reading, which has become difficult due to macular degeneration issues. The first part was simple enough, since you can change the font size of any popular e-reader and/or change the orientation to landscape to get the maximum amount of words per line while still making the text comfortable to read.

The buttons on the e-reader itself were another issue because of their small print size and low contrast. I tackled this by taking a white Kindle 2 (which has larger buttons than the newer model and comes in white) and color-coding the keys as seen on the photo. (Sorry for the fuzziness. Speaking of low vision, my cell phone camera's a bit myopic!) Using fluorescent file folder labels cut into quarters and a bit of bright red nail polish for the top of the toggle switch, I settled on green for Next Page, yellow for Home, and orange for the Prev Page key. What I was looking for it higher contrast and something as simple and intuitive as possible.

Next, I created a large print simplified, single directions page, which I color-coded using highlighters, laminated, and gave to her caregiver, who will help her with anything more complex than turning pages. (Remember, my m-i-l is in her nineties!) Here's the text of that page, with my name and phone number omitted:


Using Your Kindle
1. To turn on and off, slide and release switch on top.
2. There will be a picture on the screen when it is turned off.
3. To select a book or choose a new book, press the yellow HOME button. Push the red toggle switch up or down to underline the title of the book you want to read. Then push on toggle switch to select.
4. While reading a book, use the green NEXT PAGE button to advance the page.
5. If you need to go back a page, press the orange PREV PAGE button.
6. I have set text for large print. To adjust or turn on Text-to-Speech (which makes the Kindle read aloud to you, if desired), press the Aa button. Then use toggle switch to choose (push up and down) and select (push).
7. Call C______ at XXX-XXX-XXXX if you need help or would like a new book added to your library.
8. Plug into wall will charger about once a week.

Since this Kindle is registered to me and uses 3G, I will be able to purchase new books for her and talk her caregiver through loading them to her Kindle. Or I can simply do it during visits.

By making this experience as simple and easy as possible, I hope to conquer my m-i-l's extreme resistance to any new technology. Since her caregiver is also tech-adverse, it was an interesting challenge. I'm not certain whether my gift will be a hit or a miss, or whether a more expensive but larger-screened Kindle DX would have been a better choice, but it occurred to me that many other folks who have aging parents or loved ones with visual impairments might be interested in my methods.

I'll let you know how it goes over!

Buy This Book: Open Road restores lost passages in new "From Here to Eternity" ebook

Available on Kindle today! James Jones’s classic tale of army life in the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor is being released with scenes and dialogue that were considered obscene back in the 1950s and rare photos from the author’s estate.

What I love about this: I'm revisiting a book I loved in my teens, and I'm inspired about the neverending story now possible with the advent of ebooks.

NPR did a great story about the book release.

Claudia Lonow's hilarious bookling shows Kindle Singles "How To Not Succeed"

Waiting for my flight to take off yesterday, I was scouting for a quick read to download on my Kindle and decided to try one of their new Kindle Singles: How To Not Succeed In Show Business By Really Trying, Claudia Lonow's shocking and hilarious...um...

I don't know what to call it. Bookling? Embryo? I laughed out loud and really loved her writing, but this isn't a book. And it's not a short story. It's a clever, funny word zygote that starts to tell a story, then lurches to an abrupt halt just when the reader has become fully engaged.

Billed as a "teeny tiny show biz memoir", How To Not Succeed... rambles a bit about her childhood, including a few mortifying anecdotes about her wannabe actor parents, then talks a little about her acting career without really saying anything, then takes us on a misadventure at a sex club. Lonow is smart and funny a la Chelsea Handler, but the truncated format and almost insights make the piece, as well written as it is, about as satisfying as a mouthful of uncooked chicken.

I'm open to giving other Kindle Singles a try, but for my taste, this one realizes my worst fear about *quick and easy* e-pubbing: the fatally premature birth of what could have been a great book. I truly hope Lonow is able to spin this thing into a book deal and that she can sustain the pace and creativity she started with. If I'd downloaded this as a Kindle sample, I would have clicked through to buy the book. It wasn't the buck-ninety-nine that matters; I was in the mood for and expected something complete and fully crafted. A memoir, no matter how teeny tiny, needs a beginning, middle and end.

Not just a begi

I feel like the author was done an injustice here. She's very talented, very funny, and willing to go way out there. She somehow manages to make some extremely unfunny aspects of her life absolutely side-splitting. But instead of offering some form of redemption or enlightenment, a sense of completion or that sense of future that makes for a satisfying read, this just sort of drove off a cliff.

Don't confuse the rise of ebooks with the death of books

In a great overview of the new Kindle app, The Book is Dead, Long Live the Kindle App, Vince Font says:

I'll admit, I'm a latecomer to eReaders, and I came to their appreciation grudgingly. I'm a reader of books, and I always have been. I'm a fan of good binding... of colorful dust jackets… of awesome cover art… and I think that the smell of a freshly cracked book comes second only to the "new car smell" in the great olfactory list of aromas. So I only begrudgingly endorsed something as blasphemous as an eReader – or, in this case, an application that only serves to further strengthen the already booming eBook market...I really tried to find fault in the Kindle app, because I just figured "It's free. How good could it possibly be?" The answer, as it turns out, is: pretty darn good.

He goes on to discuss the sweet price tag (free!), syncability, and general handy-dandiness of the app.

Last week over coffee, Colleen showed me how to sync my Kindle to my snazzy new Motorola Droid. I started out saying, "I'll never read on my phone." But that ended up going the way of "I'd never read on a Kindle." In the 14 months since I got the Kindle, I've read more books than I read in the previous three years combined. The adjustable print size makes it possible for my eyesight-of-a-certain-age to read without getting sleepy. (The optometrist told me that's actually the brain signalling "close your eyes" in response to eye strain.) The classics are available cheap or free, so my Kindle is loaded with them. I take advantage of freebies (like the recent Blue Boy offer) and impulse buy when I get a recommendation from a friend or see an intriguing review. I travel a lot, and while I used to pack the books I felt I should read instead of the books I wanted to read, now I have my whole library tucked in my purse, and I end up reading more of both.

This is where I take issue with, if nothing else, the title of Font's article. My Kindle has given books a whole new life for me. I read more, read faster, and I read better. The only thing missing is the paper. All the stories, characters, dialogue, sense of place, soaring emotion - everything that's drawn me into a life of books - is alive and well.

Comparison shopping for eReaders

If you're on the fence about an e-reader purchase, here's a great device comparison chart. I was surprised to see this on the website of new kid on the block, Kobo, because (not surprisingly) Kindle pretty much comes out on top when you lay it out like this.

I have a Kindle and a Nook, and I love them both. (My Kindle has a cool Van Gogh skin and my Nook sports a trendy Jonathan Adler shuck.)

Author Rakesh Satyal offers free download of "Blue Boy" in response to recent LGBT teen suicides

The recent suicide of an 8th grade boy here in Houston absolutely broke my heart. It is SO time for us to change this dynamic in our culture. I met Rakesh Satyal, an incredibly smart, thoughtful editor in NY a few months ago. Promptly went and bought, read and loved his beautiful debut novel. In response to the recent rash of suicides among LGBT youth, Rakesh is offering Blue Boy free on Kindle.

Satyal, who won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Debut Fiction this year, tells Advocate.com: “I really wanted to kind of put together this untold story, a gay Indian-American boy, but at the same time I wanted it to be universal in its pains. I think we’ve seen especially recently this sense that kids can feel isolated when they’re different in any way is one of the most persistent things about being a kid. The idea was to tell a particular story but make it universal and show, ‘Here is a resilience in kids that gives them a way of dealing with the harder things in life much more effectively in some cases than adults.’”

Twelve-year-old Kiran Sharma is into ballet...and his mom's makeup. And he believes he's the 10th reincarnation of Krishnaji, the blue-skinned Hindu deity and plans to announce this at the Martin Van Buren Elementary School talent show. As he's preparing his elaborate costume, flute solo and dance moves (with Whitney Houston backup), Kiran's skin begins to turn blue.

According to PW: "Satyal writes with a graceful ease, finding new humor in common awkward pre-teen moments and giving readers a delightful and lively young protagonist." And Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk says, "The best fiction reminds us that humanity is much, much larger than our personal world, our own little reality. Blue Boy shows us a world too funny and sad and sweet to bebased on anything but the truth."

Click here for the free Kindle download.

Freebie Alert! Triple Exposure for Kindle

Psst! My romantic thriller TRIPLE EXPOSURE is for a limited time FREE on Kindle (and their #1 free download!)

If you don't own a Kindle reader, you can download it to your PC, iPad, or smartphone. And in case you need more encouragement than FREE, here's the PW Review for the book, which was a 2009 RITA nominee for Best Romantic Suspenese:

Thompson (The Salt Maiden) packs this well-paced thriller full of twists and the local color of a small Texas town. Photographer Rachel Copeland has been formally acquitted of the murder of Kyle Underwood, a young man who stalked her, but she remains disgraced in her adopted Philadelphia community, where many still believe she seduced and killed him. Rumors and harassment follow Rachel as she flees to her hometown of Marfa, Texas, where she butts heads with her stepmother, Patsy, and other locals. One of the few people willing to support Rachel is Zeke Pike, a woodcarver with a secret of his own, and they soon wrestle with romantic feelings for each other as mysterious stalkers threaten and try to separate them. Thompson's supporting characters and their tensions are believable, especially Patsy with her multilayered jealousy and unhappiness. The red herrings are exquisitely placed, and the climax will surprise even the most jaded of suspense readers. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Why won't Amazon release Kindle sales figure? (Jeff Bertolucci of PCWorld enlightens us)

From an interesting article by Jeff Bertolucci of PCWorld this morning on the Kindle marketing strategy and why Amazon has been less than forthcoming about exactly how many Kindle devices have been sold:

Amazon's Kindle strategy is to distribute digital content (e.g., e-books) to a wide range of devices from multiple vendors and on multiple platforms, including Apple's iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, Android smartphones and (very soon) tablets, and Mac and Windows PCs...Perhaps Kindle hardware sales stats aren't all that relevant, particularly since Amazon's e-book strategy appears to be working. Still, it'd be nice to see some numbers alongside those "fastest-selling ever" claims.

Read the rest here.

Amazon bestseller list will be for best sellers (as opposed to most popular giveaways)

This today from Rachel Deahl at PW:

For some in publishing it may be a curiosity, for others a point of contention—Amazon’s practice of including free downloads in its list of most popular Kindle titles. It will soon no longer be an issue. A representive at the e-tailer has confirmed that the company will soon be dividing the bestseller list in two, one for paid books and the other for free titles. The date for the switch is vague—the rep for Amazon would only say it will happen in “a few weeks”—but the switch will certainly be noticed many in the industry.

Read the rest here.

Is Kindle for old folks?

In Publisher's Lunch today:

Following Engadget's report in early April, yesterday Target confirmed that they will start selling Kindle as of April 25. But they'll start with just their downtown Minneapolis store and south Florida (which apparently holds 102 Targets), "rolling out to more Target stores later this year." (Does that confirm that the target Kindle demographic is retirees?)

Oldladysayswha? I don't want my ereader to multifunction as a video game or mini TV or BlackBerry flavored all-purpose brain dildo. I just want to read books on the thing. Though I do periodically revisit In the Night Kitchen, most of the books I've read since my ninth birthday were not illustrated with full color pictures. The instant library gratification and simplicity of the Kindle has more than doubled my readerly consumption since I got it, and I've been reading mostly classics. I felt a surge of hope that this would be the dynamic for younger readers, too, but I fear the iPad has so much other stuff going on, it won't encourage reading straight up old books that just, you know, tell stories'n'junk.

Bottom line, I just don't see iPad as an ereader like Nook and Kindle. I see it as a super cool lightweight entertainment system, and if you really must read a fusty old book, well, there's an app for that.

Or maybe I'm just getting old.

This from the Wall Street Journal:

During a recent episode of "The Colbert Report," Stephen Colbert gushed about the iPad and showed the cover of Newsweek, which carried the headline "What's so great about iPad? Everything." He then flipped to the back of the magazine to show a black and white Kindle ad. Poking fun at the pitch, Mr. Colbert said: "Oh look, the screen has both black and gray."

Ouch. Next thing you know, I'll be yelling at those damn kids to get out of my yard. And reading my Kindle with horn rimmed glasses on a fake pearl chain.

Kindling Desire

Amazon has just announced the release of the Kindle 2, an electronic reading device that has taken aim at the intersection of booklust and gadget-philia in my avaricious little heart.

Three hundred fifty-nice bucks or not, I want one. I want to be able to buy books and have them appear, as if by magic, at the touch of a button. I want to be able to store as many of them as I want without having them pile up all over my house. I want to have the cool new tool and take it for a test drive.

I want...
I want...
I want... (Wiping away drool)

Or do I? Because I love the tactile pleasure of the page, the smell of the new ink and paper, the craft and thought that went into the embossing of the title's letters, the font and the layout and artwork and all the little details. I love the feeling of reading books as prior generations read them, of pulling myself out of technology's slipstream and reverting to a slower-paced world.

Also, to me, the joy of discovering a great book isn't complete until I've loaned it to a friend, and we've discussed it. But the Kindle, terrific as it it, won't allow you to pass books along to others. In a way, that's great for authors, since it lessens the chance the electronic version of their labor will be distributed far and wide for free. But it also deprives these same writers of the chance to earn new fans.

Besides, as much as I admire the Kindle's cleverness, I'm also very aware that Amazon's got itself a terrific little racket going, since Kindle users can only purchase Kindle books through Amazon. As the device grows more popular (and it's bound to, particularly since Oprah recently declared how much she loved it) what will this do to my favorite brick & mortar bookstores, particularly the independent booksellers nearest and dearest to my heart? (Sending a shout-out to my friends at Katy Budget Books and Houston's Murder by the Book, among others. You folks are what book selling's all about!)

I'm not sure I want to live in a world where cool, little stores with employees who know books and hand-sell them can't survive, a world where Amazon -- much as I love it -- and e-retailers (should you use another brand of e-reader) are the only game in town. So for the time being, I'm holding off on purchasing a Kindle.

Besides, I've decided it would be waaaay too dangerous to have my credit card on file and only the touch of a button between me and my addiction. I shudder, thinking of the book bill I'd rack up.

So what about the rest of you? Any Kindle fans here? If not, are you waiting for the price to come down, or does the idea of reading from a screen leave you cold?

My Shelves Overfloweth

I have a serious problem. All of my bookshelves (and I have many) look like the ones pictured. Or much worse. Besides that, there are the books stacked beneath nightstands, hidden in magazine racks, and shoved in various nooks and crannies.

Many are old favorites. Some not so much. Others are autographed by good friends, and far too many are waiting around to catch my eye.

So what's a book hoarder to do? Psst... Buy more bookcases, whispers my avaricious soul, but I know in my heart there could never be enough bookcases or enough room in my house to place them.

I know in my heart the time has come. Time to set some books free, from paperbacks (even autographed copies) I know I'll never reread to those I suspect, after a decent interval (years-long in many cases) will never get read in the first place. It's time to find new homes for hardcovers I've loved and loaned to friends and duplicate copies of the audio version of my own book. Though I've been holding on to most of the books I've used to research the historicals I've written, it's probably time to turn some of them loose as well. (Sob!!!)

So today I culled, at least a little, but rather than earn a few measly bucks of store credit trading in, I e-mailed a young mother I barely know save for the fact that she loves to read and has little money to buy books. She reacted quickly, gratefully, reminding me of something Joni recently wrote about so movingly: that of all the joys that books can bring up, it is sharing them that's best.

But lest you think I'm as generous as St. Joni, I still have hundreds of books left. As proof, I'll tell you that this photo was taken *after* I cleaned house. ;)

So, bibliophiles out there, how do you deal with the storage problem? Have you ever been tempted, as I have lately, to buy an Amazon Kindle or E-reader due to space considerations? And if you have one, do you miss the feel of paper-in-your hands, the smell the wafts up from fresh pages? And what about your eyes? Do they suffer from the screen-time?