Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story
cgpgrey.com
cgpgrey.com
I had been planning to launch a big, public campaign about Kindle typography to try and get Amazon to change her ways. But I came to the conclusion: why bother?
Amazon thinks that it already has "the customer," in its most broad abstraction, already in its grasp, and doesn't ever need to fight to keep any of them there. That is why, when I departed my Amazon subsidiary in December of 2014, they were only just starting to hire a UX team. These principles can be made so dogmatic to the point of destructive company culture that outwardly resists change, be it to marketing designs or entire technology infrastructures that entire teams comprising hundreds of people rely upon to get work done.
This is why it is very hard to keep talented people in positions of management at Amazon.
Also, perfect timing to read this article, after just purchasing a Kindle Paperwhite and having it for a few weeks now.
As a casual reader, I find the Kindle Paperwhite as the perfect medium for my reading needs. I can hold it in one hand, I can read it any time of the day with adjustable brightness, and the e-ink is very clear and the font is fine. With respect to the article, I don't think the typical person cares much for typography, as long as it can be read and understood. The justification notion, I would argue that the typical user may not notice it as much as the hardcore reader. This is where I disagree with the parent post here, as in Amazon may understand "the customer" in this particular case, or at least the majority. Everyone who I've come across absolutely loves, and heavily uses, their Kindle(s). Some people even collect them! All reviews love them and it's a great experience.
The point of the article: Now, I'm all for making the Kindle the best reading device ever by adding all these cool features (justification, typography, different modes for different things like iBooks, etc.), but instead of targeting the Kindle as being deficient for most users, the article is targeting Amazon more so for it's lack of pushing the product to all it can be and I think this can be extracted toward larger companies doing what they can to push the envelope with their product. This is where I agree with the parent post, Amazon seems to be lacking in this area. The blogpost written and the parent post both point to deficiencies in how Amazon looks to their customers and pushes their products to the best they can be.
The fact of the matter is it impacts all readers, whether they recognize it or not, and there is a reason the printing industry generally doesn't do it.
https://kaiweber.wordpress.com/2010/05/31/ragged-right-or-ju...
containing numerous links to academic papers showing lower test scores with right justification. I don't know if the author cherry picked only the articles favoring the authors opinion.
(edited to add, also try googling for the topic and "Dyslexia" where the conclusions seem fairly non-controversial and realize dyslexia is a spectrum disorder)
This is aside from the fairly obvious aesthetic argument that looking at ugly things (like right justified text) inherently lowers your quality of life.
On the side of left justification, it looks better, there seems to be at least some scientific data it reads better, and the argument why its easier and better to read makes sense. On the side of right justification we have crickets.
Perhaps there's a patent on displaying left justified text on an ebook, and merely by ruining the product by right justification, the patent can be avoided.
If ugly line endings even make your list of "things in my life that could be going better," you're living a pretty charmed life. :)
(edit to add, its like living in an area plagued by vandalism)
As for aesthetics, the reason for right justification in the first place is that when done correctly it looks nicer. Unfortunately it's hard to do correctly.
I sincerely doubt that there's a patent on left justified text, since that's the most obvious way to display text. I hope you were just kidding.
The overall structure of the text looks nicer, but not the individual sentences.
"Thirty-two poor readers were then tested with the same material arranged in longer lines averaging 12 words, and no disadvantage of justification was found."
So the only time that there was any evidence of poor comprehension in that study was with very short lines - 7 words per line - and with poor readers.
The third one was published in 1991, and again seems to be based on narrow lines - 4 column newspaper. And if the examples on page 29 are anything to go by, it's potentially also based on fixed space type - and I'm not going to argue with anyone about justified text with a fixed space type looking poor.
> This is aside from the fairly obvious aesthetic argument that looking at ugly things (like right justified text) inherently lowers your quality of life
But if you don't notice it, then you presumably don't think it's ugly.
I'll happily blame the justification, but there are other layout problems which also distract: image handling and inconsistent paging don't help in the slightest.
Kobo has already had those features for years now.
As it happens, I didn't buy my Kobo Aura H2O for that reason. I bought it for the microSD card slot, the frontlight, the ability to move documents to and from the device on my own terms, and the ability to read EPUBs without a pass through Calibre first. The water resistance is a nice plus.
I'm all for making the Kobo the best reading device ever, but so far, after the first 40 books, I haven't been able to come up with anything I might want to change about the hardware.
The Kobo in-device bookstore and computer sync software, on the other hand, could use some more work. Fortunately for me, I don't ever have to use either of those things to enjoy the full use of my hardware device.
Even if Amazon has 70% of the market share, they can't afford to ignore features that their remaining competitors have.
It's essentially saying fight for what you believe is right, but if the group decides an alternative approach don't sabotage the project from the inside because your ideas were not chosen just so you can say "A ha! Told you!"
I don't buy into most of the Amazon dogma (I currently work at Amazon). But I don't think the lesson behind this leadership principle is idiotic.
(And apologies to my friends who work at Amazon, but let's be honest: you're all going to quit within a year or two to work somewhere that's less abusive of its employees.)
I've resorted to using a camping headlamp set on "red" (not as bright/obtrusive) when I want to use the kindle to read. However, I mostly just use my phone and the Kindle app.
Advances in the display beyond the gen 3 (first I bought) didn't merit any sort of upgrade for me.
Mostly a tongue-in-cheek comment but somewhere deep in the halls of Amazon I bet that discussion was had...
1. Return policy. Amazon has the best ebook return policy in the business. It seems essentially the same as their physical book policy. The last time I checked, Google Play was next-best (7 days no-questions-asked, regardless of jurisdiction) and everyone else grudgingly had a return policy where it was required by law (i.e. Europe) and none otherwise.
2. Sideloaded books. AFAIK, of the major ebook retailers, only Amazon and Google will let you sync books you didn't purchase from them to your cloud library. Other retailers might let you read sideloaded books in their clients, but you have to use Dropbox or an equivalent for backup and syncing across devices.
3. Client support. If it supports third-party applications, Amazon makes a Kindle client for almost anything you might want to read an ebook on, plus they have a web-based reader. Meanwhile, Google and Apple are busy paying "strategy taxes" for platforms it isn't in their interest to support, and B&N and Kobo don't quite have the resources to keep up.
In any case, since you can just open the files in the desktop version of Kindle, it doesn't seem like it would be such a big deal.
I have a Paperwhite and I couldn't be happier with it. It's the best manga reading device I own and it does a pretty good job with PDFs.
They're very profitable, but reinvest almost all of their money.
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-has-n...
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=203326
https://github.com/koreader/koreader
ePub and PDF support, text reflow/cropping/reformatting (great for papers!), plethora of options from contrast to margins, custom fonts, per-document style sheets, etc etc.
You can also install things like Gargoyle for interactive fiction on the go.
http://www.fabiszewski.net/kindle-gargoyle/
Just make sure to set up BackDoorLock so that Amazon can't force an OTA update on you.
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=205666
You might also want the Rescue Pack in case things go wrong. It boots you into diagnostics mode if you start your Kindle with a USB cable plugged in..
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=195670
(how to exit diags mode) http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Touch_Hacking#Exiting...
See the FGA thread and MobileRead's "Kindle Developer's Corner" for more info.
it also gives you a lot more options on how to tweak the way it reflows text, as well as font choices. It makes it a much better device for reading.
Just don't ever connect it to a wifi. This will also keep the ads off it.
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Touch_Hacking
It depends on your firmware version.
Once a month Amazon seems to make a release that outright breaks a critical flow in the app. For the past couple weeks I've had to use the website to skim through books because every time the app tries to open the store view for a book the app instead opens Chrome with "about:blank" as the URL. /facepalm
I'll ignore the fact the tablet version gets a proper store interface (when it's not completely broken) but the cellphone version gets a regurgitated ancient web view that was last updated a half decade ago.
I can only conclude that Kindle isn't profitable for Amazon at all and they throw appropriate talent at it... that is none at all.
Does Apple give a rip about iBooks? Google doesn't seem to give a crap about getting indies on Google Play.
Had same issue, reported it, was told to uninstall and reinstall, no joy. Upgraded to Android 5.1 which included a new webview component update, issue fixed.
And the personalization is useless. I have a very specific profile: history, statistics textbooks, classic literature, modern poetry. The front page of the store, right now, is offering me "Billy The Bug: Short Stories, Games, Jokes and More"; "Frontiers Saga 13", some kind of space crap; and "Highland Guard" (picture: weedy man with sword).
Plus about four 50 Shades clones. I used to worry about the age of Total Internet Surveillance; turns out Amazon can't even figure out my gender.
For a start it's incredibly flaky. Sometimes the slightest accidental touch will cause it to jump randomly to somewhere in the book. Other times I can press it hard or rub furiously and still nothing happens. Then sometimes it will pause for a few seconds, then do something incomprehensible.
If it had simply retained touch for "go forward" and "go back" it would be acceptable, but it seems that the Sales Department insisted that the engineers overload it with extra features.
When I'm reading I'm constantly interrupted by the idiotic "change font" or "look up dictionary" or "take notes" function when I don't want them. It's infuriating.
And then when reading a Magazine, the actions change and suddenly there's a jump forward (or back) one chapter which causes you to completely loose your page.
I love my Kindle, but I hate the touch function.
I don't know, I read a lot on the Paperwhite and I got used to the touch screen. It's quite comfortable, even though I would probably prefer some actual buttons. In any case I was won over. I was reading a lot of paper books before and I am finding the experience of reading with an ereader to be superior in almost every way.
That's what keep sneezing or Kindle. Not having to fiddle and accidentally leave my place if I set the book down, being able to get a new book almost instantly, being able to look up words I don't know keep using the Kindle despite all the software/hardware faults. Not having to fiddle and accidentally leave my place if I set the book down, being able to get a new book almost instantly, being able to look up words I don't know.
But the absolute best is progress syncing. I don't bring my Kindle in less I know I'm going to need it, but anywhere I get stuck I can pull out my phone and pick up the book I was reading right at my last position. When I get back to my Kindle it already knows how much further I read. It's like hav when I get back to my Kindle it already knows how much further I read. It's so much more convenient than carrying a physical book around.
Especially large/long books. I read King's The Stand last summer. I'm glad I didn't have to struggle with the 1,200 page physical edition.
Yes. I read a lot in bed before sleeping, and i found it extremely uncomfortable nowadays to have to turn pages in a paper book - having the possibility to just be on the same "surface" when reading text is just great. And the paperwhite is just light enough that it does not get too painful on your wrists, compared to a large book that just makes you tired holding it.
That said, even when it works perfectly it remains inferior to the simple shoulder buttons that the older kindles had. I hope Amazon brings them back on the next Kindle.
And those "touchstrips" on the Voyage are indeed infuriating. If anyone is in the market for a kindle then by all means save your money and stick with the Paperwhite.
The Paperwhites I got for my brother and sister use much more convenient number input (touchscreen) and have much nicer cases. I prefer my grey screen to their white, though.
If Amazon just released a kindle with the same four shoulder buttons, the same screen, a lighter-weight case, and number buttons so I don't have to navigate an on-screen symbol display with a hard-to-use D-pad, I'd be thrilled. The buttons don't need to be reimagined. I don't get why they left.
I use a paperwhite and read to fall asleep. The white-tinted light isn't as much of an issue as people or f.lux make it out to be.
If the paperwite were tinted, this person would probably be complaining that it makes them fall asleep rather than stay alert while reading.
There's always a group of people that can't use a given product because they have one issue or another. For example, the Kindle Voyage isn't accessible for a blind person.
I also wonder if the author knows there is haptic feedback on the buttons and that the activation pressure can be adjusted. With minimum pressure and maximum feedback there is no strain on my fingers even after 8 hours of continuous reading. I do have strain issues with my fingers so I should have had a problem with it if that was the case.
I don't understand this? Why not disagree with the valid points he made, rather than just calling him picky? When you use a device a lot, as you would an ereader, I can imagine these problems becoming magnified.
I'm not saying user experience critiques aren't valid, I'm saying the article is so filled with hypberbole and anti-Amazon insults that there's no point debating his complaints.
Like others have said, this guy is going to hate on everything Amazon is doing, because he's making it perfectly clear hates Amazon. It's a no win argument.
Also keep in mind that just because you don't notice something doesn't make it any more or less valid. The typography issues were pointed out and as a former print designer they are very valid albeit a bit subtle (in my opinion anyway).
That being said, I don't understand why he involve the Echo. First, it's a totally depend product, and second, it's the most used internet radio and music payer I've owned.
The Paperwhite screen is just fine for me, and the justification problems the poster refers to have only been annoying to me a few times - the free public domain books are often not converted decently, and side-loaded books aren't always formatted nicely. Other than that, no problems here.
It's frustrating because the kindle does a lot of things right, but it could be so much better with just a little thoughtful attention.
I miss going on Amazon, clicking some button, and immediately start reading a new book. Now that's a multi step process that involves a computer and a DRM removal tool. But the reading experience is easily worth it for me.
I love my Kobo Aura HD, great piece of hardware.
The new waterproof Kobo especially shows me that Kobo actually understands making a better e-reader.
That's almost right. It should display the last page read!
Showing the book cover solves that :)
I just want to read PDFs, text files, possibly HTML with some light CSS. I'd like sync to take at most 30 seconds of work. Would you recommend one? Any alternatives?
This is not a great argument. First, because the Kindle allows you to dim the screen, and in fact, does so automatically in dark rooms. Pulling my Voyage out and comparing it to my screen with Flux, anecdotally, it looks to be producing less light than my laptop does.
And what are the alternatives? Not lighting the kindle display, and having you use an external light source? You have the same problem if you use LED lights - white light is generated in much the same way in LED bulbs, so you need to dim them as well, leaving you in the same position.
>You can tap both margins to advance the page. (Unlike Amazon who thinks readers always hold their books in the same hand. Have they ever seen people read books?)
The pressure sensitive buttons previously mentioned by the author are on both sides of the Voyage. You can use either hand to move forward or backward.
Yes, but they're a total usability disaster. The author's description of them is spot on, I've disabled them because they're just too painful to use.
I think this falls into the whole 'You can't please everyone' bucket - my anecdotal evidence among friends/family/coworkers with the Voyage suggest it's a big hit.
As an anecdote, I am immensely susceptible to falling asleep when reading in the dark with the Paperwhite.
The alternative therefore is to use LEDs with a lower colour temperature[2], producing the kind of orange light associated with flames and traditional incandescent lights, which people have been using to read by for centuries.
This isn't obscure or novel science, it's something the Amazon product team should know, or at least discover through basic research into their chosen field. The fact that they haven't backs the article author's suggestion that they're incompetent or uncaring about the quality of their product.
[1] http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature
I don't have a measurement handy for the lux on a kindle at the dimmest setting, nor can I find any details on if brighter lights have a more pronounced affect on melatonin suppression.
The thing is no matter what, this is still assuming that your preferred method of reading is the right one. Some people do not like the look of orange lights - personally I hate incandescents, and have been using CFLs and LEDs putting out white light for a long time now. Perhaps using said lighting directly inside the kindle looks particularly bad. Perhaps they assumed people want to stay awake while reading.
Making a design decision you don't agree with means they made a design decision you don't agree with - not that they don't care or are incompetent.
Not pleasant, is it?
I don't follow. It feels like I'm pressing down on something.
Of all the things I can think of that would cause an RSI, pinching a pressure-sensitive button seems low on the list.
I also don't understand why, if the author loved his first kindle so much, he doesn't just keep using it. They release new ones frequently enough (and old ones keep working long enough) that you can skip several generations and pick out the revisions that you like most.
None of this works as well as the buttons on Kindle keyboard , but I bet it cost a hell of lot more money.
> that you can skip several generations and pick out the revisions that you like most.
The problem is that you really can't. Despite owning the absolute top-of-the-line device the software feels half-baked. Shortly after launch it would often crash itself and require physical restarts. The on screen keyboard is absolutely atrocious, Which they appear to tried to fix with text suggestions. The suggestions are slow and wildly inconsistent which makes it impossible to quickly use them. Even if it suggests the right word you never know where on the suggestion bar to actually going to pop-up.
As the author mentions the text layout system hasn't been updated in years despite obvious problems. I waited years for a new version with physical buttons but ended up settling for the somewhat acceptable touch strips. He complains about the lighting system, which is apparently still a problem for a lot of for a lot of voyage users (luckily I'm not one).
Also Amazon doesn't seem to do anything to control or improve the quality of e-books. They're often laughably bad.
His main thesis is dead on. The project doesn't feel like anyone who actually likes books is working on it. It doesn't feel like a passion, it feels like a terrible afterthought that people rotate in and out of making random changes to try and look like they did some management.
Install alternative reading software on the device (see the other post in this thread).
Well, they probably don't wear out. I know someone who replaced their Kindle Keyboard because the next page button wore out after four years. (They love their Paperwhite, both for the touch screen and the front-lighting.)
You couldn't imagine how right you are.
"Their Firephone is so terrible they literally can’t give it away"
"and the existence of the Amazon Echo strains all reason."
I'm not sure if that's why the author added it, but I really wish Amazon would first fix a bit more low-hanging fruit for its most beloved hardware product, instead of sinking time and money into unrelated crap.
It always feels good when you pay for something and you can feel that the money goes into making it even better (software updates, next hardware iteration...).
It'd be very surprising to me if the resources put into the Echo had any impact whatsoever on the amount of resources put into the Kindle team.
I hear this argument a lot - "Why does company X work on feature Y when feature Z isn't complete", when features Y and Z are handled by completely different teams with their own dedicated resources.
Amazon is famous for taking all profits from one product, and investing them into other (new) products. This is precisely what annoys me here :|
It's light, has nice type, a decent battery, it's rubberised case is easy to grip and non-slip.
It falls down epically on the store experience but since I side load with Calibre that makes not a jot of difference.
The kindle I had before had an incredibly slick shopping experience but in every other way was inferior.
I hate justified margins though so that's reason enough not to be happy with Kindles.
1. font comparisons
2. age range (university students were tested, but these fonts will most likely have the greatest effect on younger people who have not learned to adapt to being dyslexic)
3. languages
That said, I'm also a graphic designer and many book layouts are awful. I can't tell how many times I read 1 star reviews of good books which were worthless as an ebook.
The ebook is thrashing 500 years of typographic tradition. It's trashing everything we know about making a good reading experience. This is not only insulting, but insightful. Amazon is telling his costumers:
"We are a GOOD ENOUGH company. We are not striving for excellence."
No, I don't like touch screens. The buttons are much better. The Kindle 3 nailed it. The only thing it is missing is a backlight.
The touch screen isn't bad, but the software doesn't make good use of it. The fake touch that's why I moved from a keyboard up to the voyage. The back light is really nice, as is the much higher resolution screen.
The touch screen isn't bad, but the software doesn't make good use of it. The fake touch buttons are acceptable.
If they had used real buttons, or actually polish the software, it be a pretty great device. As it is, it's just okay.
I don't know of any good ereaders through.
but if they make it a touch screen and take the buttons away, no, I'll stick with the old DX.
The fact that the author doesn't have one nice thing to say about the Kindle, and yet keeps buying them makes it seem there's some kind of Kindle dissing agenda behind it.
Is there any e-reader with "retina"-style e-ink that is optimized for viewing PDFs/PostScript and allowing a SD card?
I actually couldn't fit my whole Kindle (not sideloaded) collection on it at the same time, even discounting cookbooks, comics, and other heavy-graphics things, which was a problem because the category feature at the time only supported on-device books.
If you have trouble with a site, try turning off javascript temporarily and turning on article mode after it loads.
That said, I would love to have the physical buttons back -- when the touch screen works, it is okay, but when it decides for some reason that I want to change my font size instead of turning the page, or just decides that I didn't press it, or turns the page twice when I think it didn't register my first touch, I get unaccountably mad.
Other than that I'm still quite pleased with the thing (apart from the small trouble of having to remove DRM from most books to read my, paid for books on unsupported devices. Calibre plugins make this quite painless thankfully.)
I don't mind the justification as a general rule, and actually find extreme hyphenization (which was their route on the iOS apps) much more distracting.
My only real problems have been:
* The haptic feedback can't be made prominent enough to be obvious through the first-party leather cover.
* The tap zone for switching percentage/page number/etc has no visual affordance and I find it pretty non-obvious to reliably find.
* The automatic lighting is way more sensitive to what's over my shoulder than the ambient light, so goes very dark if the room is softly lit from behind the Kindle (or very bright if there's a light in my background).
* The font size isn't consistent between books even if I don't use publisher font. I assume that's because the markup of the books has some influence on the font size and doesn't always use "default."
* I'd prefer a first-party book spine case over a notepad style case--that said, the origami stand has been extremely useful for reading while eating.
Other than those niggles, it's been great, and certainly has been a more enjoyable device to use than any of my past Kindles.
It's a better product in most regards, but I find I use it for reading far less. I tend to almost exclusively read on my Nexus 7. Twilight makes it possible to dim and turn the screen orange, which isn't something Kindle can do, so I like it for night time reading. I haven't tried to figure out which is better for getting to sleep after reading, but I suspect both are problematic.
Also, the Nexus is faster than the Kindle, in every dimension, so it's just more fun to browse/buy books. And, as others have noted, the touch screen on the Paper White is bad. Not a little bad, either. It's annoying as hell. And, I've also had problems with unintended page turns, and intended turns not working. The Nexus 7 has a great touch screen.
I also have an Amazon Fire Phone, and that's enough to convince me that Amazon just can't do hardware well. It's an awful phone; it would have been barely passable three years ago. Today it's laughable. And, their priorities for where to expend resources are way out of whack. The 3D stuff and four front-facing cameras to make it work, is just ridiculous. I'd much rather have one good camera than five shitty ones.
I recently got some ebooks from O'Reilly, and found that they looked much better in Google Books than on the Kindle or in the Kindle app. Amazon might be in trouble. I currently have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, so I still do most of my reading in Kindle (whether the app or the hardware Kindle), but the experience of reading in Google Books is better.
Amazon still sells used Kindle Keyboard 3Gs for reasonable prices, if you're ever tempted to go back.
Thanks for the link.
If you want an old one, looks like good quality ones are going for ~$60-80 on Amazon, and it's pretty easy to sell a Kindle via the fulfilled by Amazon seller program - just set a price slightly below others offering Prime, ship off your Kindle and other old electronics, and they send you money when your stuff sells.
That is actually not true - http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/archives/2015/01/bookerly_am...
Oh and this - "Speaking of highlights: Amazon has no graceful option to update books. Updating a book, in Amazon’s world, is the digital equivalent of handing you a new book, then burning your old one. Hope you didn’t have any notes or highlights in there." Hey that's actually not true. I beg the author to please provide examples and scenarios. Amazon goes to great lengths to not impact the reader by erasing their notes.
I like the Voyage alright, but I want the ability to turn the light ALL the way off, not just to a minimum. I still have one and use it, they just really need improve on these things so it feels less like just another screen, and more like a book.
They could read the amazon reviews page for the kindle to learn these specific gripes.
What they need is not someone now who sees the problems with the product (believe me, they know the problems), but someone who sees all these problems as it's being created and people who are able to produce reliable code that fixes it now.
The cow has left the barn on the point where this person would have been most useful.
I filled out a 15 minute survey shortly after buying one, and noted that in the comments issue. The more people who do something like that, the more likely Amazon will decide to allow user "hacks".
Just a suggestion about the blog's formatting; please remove the ` `s from the html. These non-breaking white-spaces are messing the left justification of the text in the blog.
E.g., the word "Search": https://imgur.com/HF6lhSH
I like the Voyage!
I own one, and reading on it is quite pleasant. I can see the rationale for pressure buttons (you can adjust the sensitivity). The resolution is fantastic, backlighting is great compared to reading in my particular low-light environment. The store works for what I need as a casual reader. I had a Kobo H2O, which was alright, but felt less refined. Also, the Kobo didn't have any useful newspaper subscriptions.
Also that's sort of interesting to see how a company which is supposed to take over the world is unable to deliver even the ordinary products. I hope, this will prove in the long run that to be successful you need to have a good product or service.
If anything I give Amazon credit for making it so easy to read again that I find myself forgetting to do much else
Sounds like he spends a lot of time reading, and it's natural for minor annoyances to become like Chinese water torture when one does something often.
As for full justification, I don't really mind it. It's not a pain point for me. If I wanted to be picky, I could come up with a list of minor issues.
The problem is the Kindle is the best reader out of a category of really shitty products.
I've started seriously contemplating going entirely to scanned, pirated PDFs and simply mailing the author a check the retail cost of the book. I'd love for technical books to start rendering PDFs for multiple common ereader screen sizes. Journal articles are too much to hope for.
Google Play Books supports having both EPUB and PDF for the same document, and, I believe, chooses between them based on screen size or other platform features. I don't think it supports having prerendered pages for different layouts yet, but certainly the "buy a title, which might have multiple formats for different devices" thing is already established there, so its not a big jump to see it being done with more specificity.
With good typography, the color of text blocks is even and flowing, and logical structure of headings, captions, block quotations, etc. is obvious and clear without calling attention to itself. With shitty typography, the eye is constantly pulled away from a regular flow by the uneven color within text blocks or by distracting elements on the page, certain words or phrases are illegible and require scrutiny (in some cases, switching focus back and forth between two places on the page or even between pages) and effort to figure out, and inconsistencies impose a small but continuous mental tax on the reader.
I'm certainly not, and I've never given two thoughts about typography except when weird things happen with it.