E-readers reprise

We had our annual Open House at the library Saturday, and my station was a demonstration of how to check out and download books to electronic readers and such things. A lot of people showed up just for that, I enjoyed it and feel pretty comfortable now with showing people how to use their Kindle as well as Nook, Kobo and so on.

Two things about the experience Saturday and in the last few weeks of trying to help people with the e-readers they got for Christmas, though, made me think that the distributors have a way to go to make this the best experience for their people.

One, Kindle especially seems to show up with insufficient instructions for registering and starting to use the reader. I realize that young people are born knowing what to do, but so many of our patrons are not computer savvy at all. When they open the box and discover essentially a 3X5 card that tells them pretty much what the buttons do, that is totally inadequate. This is the equivalent of giving someone a laptop, showing them how to more the pointing device and then leaving it up to them to figure everything else out. This needs major attention.

Two, all of these manufacturers need to make it clearer somehow that you cannot use the things without some access to the internet through WiFi or another connection. I had a lovely older woman whose daughter had given her a Nook so that she would not have to come into town in winter to get things to read. The lady does not even have a computer, which means she had to come to town to register the thing through a public access computer. Since she doesn't have a computer, she doesn't have an e-mail adress. And without an e-mail address, she cannot even complete the registration so she can start using the thing. Because her Nook is not a one that is really a mini-computer, she has to be able to download books onto a regular computer (which she does not have) and then transfer them to her Nook. This is easy, but in order to do it, you have to be able to download software to your own computer and register the account. This cannot be done on public access computers for the simple reason that privacy requirements make them erase everything every time someone finishes using them. I talked to her about working with her daughter, who has computers and so on, to solve this problem. But I know she is not the only one out there with this problem.

E-readers are great for people who live in the boonies and are not able to get into towns with bookstores or libraries all that often. But people in the boonies are also likely to be the ones without good internet access and, therefore, less likely to have e-mail. Nook, Kindle and their ilk need to make it clear when they sell these things that the customer will be able to use it. Otherwise they wind up with a lot of disappointed adults who were fooled by commercials into thinking the X-ray glasses would actually let them see through walls!

This is a good product! Don't let your own carelessness make it a customer service and PR nightmare.