The pulse of Alexander Interactive

In search of electronic comic reader

I got the Barnes and Noble Nook Color late last year after being disappointed both by the 1st iPad and the available Android tablets at the time. Resigned to not invest in a full fledged tablet as of yet I also found myself unable to take the e-ink plunge for 1 reason: comic books are printed in color.  I had been managing to get by reading e-comics with ComicRack on my Desktop/Laptop and Comic Book Lover does a reasonable enough job on the iPhone 4. But trying to get caught up on X-Men in rush hour traffic is impossible with a laptop and just annoying on a small (if beautiful) screen.

Enter the Nook Color: an Android powered, full color, touch screen, wifi enabled e-reader. At $249, it’s priced beween full blown Android tablets/iPad and the current king of pure e-readers, the Kindle. But because the Nook is based on the Android operating system you actually do gain the potential for full tablet capabilities (i.e. non Barnes and Noble apps) either through eventual Barnes and Nobles upgrades or through various rooting/unlocking techniques available on the web.

Getting Comic Books on the Nook Color

When it comes to actually reading comics on the Nook, the first thing to do is get them on to the device.  The Nook lets you drag and drop any of its supported formats directly on to the device (or  an optional micro SD card) once its attached to your Mac or PC so loading new content is usually easy. However since most e-comics come in either CBR or CBZ format you will usually have to convert them to a format the Nook supports, so I usually use Calibre to convert the comics to either E-Pub or PDF depending on the content:

• EPub is good for manga and similarly formatted graphic novels and they come over well on the Nook’s 7 in screen. Also the navigation is pretty similar to readers on the IPhone so you can tap the edge of the screen to quickly navigate forward and backward.

• PDF is generally better for standard comics and graphic novels because you can zoom in on larger panels and view the page in different orientations. However current native PDF reader that ships with the Nook Color is sort of lame so you can’t do two page layouts for example and have to navigate using vertical swipes only. These aren’t really deal breakers (since you cant do two page layouts in EPub either), but I do miss the effect of many multipage panels and that can make reading them a little disjointed.

Other Coolness

Beyond the general comic book coolness the expandability of an SD card is pretty cool for rotating different comic collections in and off quickly. I also use the Book Shelf feature to cross file comics for instance organizing both by series title and by story arc. Also the built in web browser, while not super snappy, is really handy when you quickly need to hit up wikipedia to figure out when Batman 1st met Talia Al Ghul. Beyond the comics it self, reading  magazines and periodicals on the NookColor is also pretty awesome  as a lot of thought went into their Magazine reader interface.

Conclusion

With the advent of the iPad 2 and the Motorola Xoom I might finally take the tablet plunge, but thanks to the Nook Color I’m not pressed. With its vivid screen, expandability, supported formats, ease of use and Android roots the Nook Color is not just the best only E-reader for comics and graphic novels, but compelling mobile platform with room to grow in its space.

We often state internally that “this year is the year of mobile.” We’ve been saying it since 2007–“2008 will be the year of mobile!”–and with the continued insurgence of Apple’s devices, 2011 may be the year we’re finally not ahead of the curve.

Part of predicting mobile, though, is in properly forecasting and anticipating use. In just over a year, our clients’ sites have seen mobile traffic trend from 1-2% of visits to 5-10% or more. (One colleague I’ve spoken with has a remarkable 32% mobile share on his informational website.) How well could that have been foreseen, and at what level is mobile adjustment important?

I’m on the record as saying mobile accessibility has become crucial, not unlike supporting legacy systems on the trailing edge of site traffic. I rallied for Mac support when Apple had 2.5% of the market; I insisted on supporting Netscape 4.7 until Netscape itself stopped supporting it; I forced Ai’s developers to accommodate IE 6 as recently as last year. With mobile traffic surging toward and past 10% of total online usage, having a site not load in iOS or Android is simply not an option.

However, that doesn’t mean the world is flocking in its entirety to mobile. Today eMarketer shared great mobile usage statistics that pegged 30% of Americans logging on via mobile more than once a week. Yet that same graph also noted that the majority of respondents, 58%, don’t use the mobile Internet at all. And two-fifths of that group doesn’t even have a web-enabled mobile device.

While we all push toward a mobile world, taking the late majority into account is just as important as embracing the early adopters. The greatest retail app in the world won’t make a difference if its target demographic won’t download it. Planning for the future, however, will.

Give the leading segment the access and utility it craves while maintaining a more traditional presence for everyone else. That will ensure across-the-board customer satisfaction–and position a site for the inevitable shift to a mobile majority.