Joe: Alright Lewis, I've got a challenge for you. Review the entire experience of reading an ebook on a first-generation Kindle in exactly five words. Lewis: Okay, easy. "Wow, this is... slightly worse." Joe: Perfect. That's exactly where our book today begins. It tackles that precise feeling of technological promise meeting a clunky, disappointing reality. We're diving into Breaking the Page: Transforming Books and the Reading Experience by Peter Meyers. Lewis: Breaking the page. I like that. It sounds aggressive, like the book has a bone to pick. Joe: It absolutely does. And Meyers is the perfect person to write this. He’s not just a tech guy; he has a degree from Harvard and an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He’s a literary writer who became a digital design consultant for huge publishers. Lewis: Wait, a novelist redesigning ebooks? That's an unusual combo. It’s like getting a Michelin-star chef to redesign the microwave. You know they're going to be horrified by what they find. Joe: Exactly. And his novelist's sensibility is why he was so let down by the early promise of digital books. He bought a Kindle the moment it came out in 2007, thinking it would revolutionize reading. But the dream quickly soured.

Lewis: I can definitely relate. I remember the excitement. Instant access to any book! A whole library in your bag! But then you actually started reading on it. Joe: And that’s where the trouble started. Meyers points out that the ebooks themselves were often just… bad. He uses this fantastic term, "conversion artifacts." Lewis: Oh, I know that feeling. You mean when half a paragraph is in a weird font, there's a random line break in the middle of a word, or a picture is just a tiny, pixelated mess? Joe: Precisely. It’s like a bad photocopy of a book, but one you paid twelve dollars for. And beyond the typos, the basic functions of reading were a struggle. He couldn't easily do simple things, like flip back and forth to check the index or a map. Things that make you a nimble, satisfied reader in a physical book became a frustrating chore. Lewis: That’s the core of it, isn't it? The technology got in the way of the reading. I remember trying to highlight a passage and accidentally turning three pages. It pulls you right out of the story. Joe: It completely breaks the immersion. And Meyers provides a perfect, almost painful, case study of this. He was reading Laura Hillenbrand's incredible book, Unbroken, on his e-reader. He came across a minor character named "Phil" and couldn't quite remember who he was. A simple problem to solve, right? Lewis: Yeah, in a physical book, you'd just flip back a few chapters, your thumb holding your spot. Takes ten seconds. On an e-reader… oh boy, I see where this is going. Joe: He uses the search function. He types in "Phil." The e-reader proudly returns 686 results. Lewis: Six hundred and eighty-six! That’s not a search result, that's a punishment. Joe: It's completely useless. The results included every mention of "Phillips," the "Philippine Islands," and so on. He was just trying to remember one character, and the device essentially threw a phone book at him. The tool designed to make finding things easier made it impossible. Lewis: That is the perfect example of the problem. It’s a feature that technically works but is functionally and emotionally a total failure. It creates more work for the reader, not less. Joe: And this led Meyers to ask a really fundamental question that echoes through the whole book. He saw these new "enhanced" ebooks starting to appear, with embedded videos and interactive graphics. And he asked, "Was this stuff being injected into books because of what was best for readers, or in order to show off what the devices could do?" Lewis: That’s a cynical question, but probably the right one. It feels like a solution in search of a problem. Like, did anyone reading Moby Dick ever think, "This is great, but I really wish I could watch a low-res, 30-second video of a whale right here in chapter 42"? Joe: Probably not. And often, these additions were just distracting. They felt less like enhancements and more like pop-up ads inside the story. It was technology for technology's sake, completely missing the point of what makes a reading experience magical, which is deep, uninterrupted focus. Lewis: The reader reception for this book was a bit mixed, and I can see why. Some people probably love those bells and whistles. But Meyers is arguing from a purist's perspective, the novelist who understands that the words are the main event. Joe: Exactly. He calls his book a "skeptic's design guide," which is a brilliant framing. He’s not anti-technology. He’s anti-bad-technology. He’s not saying we shouldn't innovate; he's saying our innovations have been clumsy, thoughtless, and often detrimental to the core experience. Lewis: Okay, so we've established the problem. The early digital book landscape was a bit of a mess, a graveyard of good intentions and bad execution. Did Meyers just complain for 150 pages, or does he actually have solutions? Joe: Oh, he has solutions. And that’s where the book goes from a critique to something genuinely visionary. He decided to stop complaining and start designing.

Joe: In 2010, Meyers bought a sketchbook and started storyboarding his ideas. He compiled them into a collection he called "A New Kind of Book." His guiding principle was to stop trying to replicate paper and start asking what a screen can do that paper can't. Lewis: I love that. It’s moving from imitation to innovation. What kind of ideas did he come up with? Joe: Some of them are just fantastic. For instance, he tackled the problem of reading plays, like Shakespeare. It can be hard to keep track of who is on stage and who is speaking. So he mocked up a feature he called "play-by-play dramas." Lewis: Play-by-play Shakespeare? Tell me more. Joe: Imagine an illustrated stage on the screen. As you read, each character's lines appear in a text bubble that physically moves around the stage, showing you their position and their actions. You're not just reading the text; you're seeing a visual representation of the scene unfold. Lewis: Whoa, so Shakespeare for the ESPN generation? I love that. It’s not a video, which would be distracting, but it’s a visual aid that actually deepens your understanding of the text itself. It serves the story. Joe: Precisely. It uses the digital medium to solve a classic reading problem. Another idea was for non-fiction. He realized that in digital books, we've lost our sense of physical place. You don't know if you're in the middle, near the end, or how long a chapter is. Lewis: Right, the little progress bar at the bottom is a sad substitute for the physical heft of the pages in your right hand. Joe: So Meyers explored the idea of "Zoomable Books." He points to an app called the Glo Bible as a great example. You can start with a high-altitude view of the entire Bible, with all the books laid out. You can tap on one, say Genesis, and it zooms in to show you the chapters. Tap a chapter, and it zooms in to the text itself. You can seamlessly move from a macro view to a micro view in seconds. Lewis: Ah, so it's like Google Maps for a book? You can see the whole country, then zoom into a single street, and then zoom back out to see where that street fits in the city. That's brilliant. It gives you context. Joe: It gives you total context! And it led to this even bigger idea, proposed by a historian named Robert Darnton, for "pyramid-shaped books." Imagine a book structured in layers. The top layer is a concise summary of the main argument. The next layer down provides more detailed essays. Below that, you have all the supporting evidence, documents, and data. And at the bottom, you have historiographical context and different interpretations. Lewis: So you can choose your own depth. If you have ten minutes, you can get the main idea. If you have a whole weekend, you can dive all the way to the bedrock. That respects the reader's time and intelligence. Joe: It completely does. It solves the problem of authors having too much material and readers having too little time. It’s a structure that’s almost impossible in print but is perfectly natural for a digital, hyperlinked environment. It’s not a book; it’s an information architecture. Lewis: This is what gets me excited. It’s about fundamentally rethinking the "page." The author asks, "What is the purpose of the page?" In print, it’s a fixed container. But on a screen, he says we have an "infinite canvas." What do we do with that? Joe: And his answer is to create new forms that are better suited to the content. He showcases cookbook apps that don't have a traditional table of contents. Instead, they have a "start screen" that asks you what you want to do. Are you looking for a 30-minute meal? A vegetarian option? Something to grill? It serves you content based on your immediate need, not a rigid, pre-defined structure. Lewis: That makes so much more sense. It’s a tool, not just a text. It’s interactive in a way that’s genuinely useful. It’s not a gimmick. Joe: And that’s the thread connecting all of Meyers' ideas. The technology must serve the reader and the content, not the other way around. Whether it's a zoomable interface, a personalized start screen, or a visual timeline that helps you track a story's events, the goal is always to make the reading experience richer, clearer, and more engaging.

Joe: When you pull it all together, from the critique of clunky early ebooks to these visionary new forms, you realize Meyers' core message is surprisingly simple. Lewis: It's not just "add more cool features," is it? Joe: Not at all. In fact, it's almost the opposite. He says, "Above all, I like to think of this book as a skeptic's design guide—as much about what to leave out as what to put in." The ultimate goal is to enhance comprehension and immersion, and sometimes that means being radically minimalist. Lewis: That’s a powerful insight. The best technology is often invisible. It doesn't scream for your attention; it just works, facilitating the experience you came for. In this case, the experience of getting lost in a world of words. Joe: Exactly. The promise of digital reading wasn't just about convenience; it was about creating a deeper, more customizable, and more accessible connection to knowledge and stories. Meyers' work is a passionate, intelligent, and practical roadmap for how we can finally start delivering on that promise. It's about breaking the page not to destroy the book, but to set it free. Lewis: It makes you wonder, what other digital tools are we using that are just clunky imitations of their analog parents? We have digital calendars that still look like paper planners and note-taking apps that mimic legal pads. Maybe the real revolution is still waiting to happen, once we stop copying the past. Joe: That's a great question, and it's at the heart of this book. It challenges creators—writers, designers, publishers—to be bolder. To ask what new kinds of beauty and understanding are possible when your canvas is infinite. We'd actually love to hear from our listeners on this. What's the best—or worst—digital reading experience you've ever had? Was it an app that did something brilliant, or an ebook that made you want to throw your device across the room? Let us know. Lewis: I have a feeling we're going to get some horror stories about search functions. Joe: I think you're right. But hopefully, some stories of inspiration, too. The future of the book is still being written, and it’s exciting to think we can all have a say in what it looks like. Joe: This is Aibrary, signing off.