The Path of the Bookseller

We get a lot of people shopping for Bibles at our store. (I think we got more people reading Bibles at my previous store. At least once a day, someone — not the same person each time — would leave under one of our comfy chairs a Bible, some erotica, and a book on the so-called Law of Attraction.)

At least once I week, I get a customer who is unsatisfied after looking, because what they want doesn’t exist. Each looks for a small Bible with large print.

This is obviously impossible in a world of fixed physical objects. The Bible, in any of its versions, is a very long book. Cram it all down into a version that will fit in a pocket or purse, and you need very small print. (My most portable Bible has 6 point print or so, but it also has the Hebrew text and only contains the Jewish Bible.) Blow it up to a size that can be read easily, especially by the aging people who most frequently look for the Bibles, and you need a very large book.

I got to mulling over this today after one such encounter. One aspect of the problem quickly struck me: if the words are permanently stuck onto paper, and you need enough paper for all of them, you slam right into the dilemma of book size versus print size. Perhaps we need a way to make only the words that you need visible.

I realized that this was pretty much the definition of the eBook reader. While I haven’t handled the Kindle, I do have experience with the Sony Reader and it does pretty much what I would want it to do: it stores a whole lot of text, brings it up on demand, and can show it in various sizes. I don’t know if it can search text, though, or handle an index or concordance, which would be critical for any serious study.

My Asus Eee PC works pretty well as an eBook reader. I’ve tried a few applications for it, and they work well. For checking the Bible, I mirrored the wonderful Hebrew/English Bible at mechon-mamre.org (and sent them a PayPal donation in thanks). Being a pile of interlinked HTML pages, it didn’t have a search engine, but in the course of writing this post, I followed a chain of links from the site to the free cross-platform search system named Wilma, which I’m eager to try out on my various PCs.

The problem with each of these solutions, though, is the price. Each costs about $300. My sense of the price point for a single-purpose Bible eBook would be about a tenth of that, at $30.

Another possibility is to use PDAs, such as the now-classic Palm Pilots. My sense, though, is that the screens are too cramped to be used comfortably as eBook readers. iPhones have better interfaces, though still small, but are expensive and tethered to even more costly data plans.

What would it take to create a tool that would be as readable as the Eee or the Reader and as easy to use as a printed book? What makes the Reader and the Kindle so expensive? Is it the e-Ink screen, or the interfaces, or the stuff under the hood?

If someone could create a device with these simple capabilities in this price range, I think it could be huge. Perhaps one of the energetic, well-heeled churches trying to connect with more of the greying boomer demographic might underwrite a project like this. (Or maybe a Jewish organization, though I think most of the target audience would want the text to include more than the Jewish Bible.)

And perhaps such a thing already exists. Does anyone know of one? I’ve seen a few possibilities online, but all have quite small screens, and the ones that look at all useable cost over $100. (Some have audio capabilities, which is a good feature that I hadn’t imagined.)

I would love to find it, and find out how to get it. (And to get my store to carry it, but that would probably require some sort of magic, and I suspect that the packages state “Miracles Not Included.”)