Tablets make reading a better pill

Kids are splashing around e-ink in India these days. A growing section of young readers are cutting their teeth on e-readers and parents are only too happy to let them savour the magic of written words in a medium they are comfortable with. With a growing number of e-readers and digitised reading content being available on the Indian market, some of them home-grown too, this is probably an inevitable trend.

Let’s take EC Media International (EC) for instance. This Bangalore-based company launched Wink E-Reader last year and has found tremendous response to it. MagsonWink, EC’s e-reader magazine application was another successful launch for it. This application can be downloaded to any android device or a Blackberry or say an iPad, and allows access to over 25 Indian magazines. Now EC is shifting into the vernacular reading space, offering content in 15 different Indian languages and is targeting young readers also.

Ravi DeeCee, founder and director, DC Group and partner EC Media International, is keen on hooking the young ones. “We make the reading experience more interactive. There are animations, illustrations that are converted totally with soundtracks and everything, there are quiz segments and jigsaw puzzles added to the digitised content to make a child more interested and involved with what he or she is reading,” he says.

And these e-books are not just being contained to the Indian readers. EC’s version of an enhanced Ramayana will feature a voice-over by Shobha Tharoor, San Francisco-based voice over artist, who, incidentally, is also Shashi Tharoor’s sister. EC is already digitising content from the DC Group and is in talks with other publishing outfits including Scholastic, one of the largest publishers and distributors of children’s books. The upgraded version of EC’s Wink will be launched by the end of January and will support the enhanced content. Priced fairly low at Rs6999, this is affordable enough for the young parents in metro cities and seems like a good device to get children familiar with literature in vernacular languages as well as in English.

Now, Wink is not the only e-reader out there, nor is it the only app-developer. There’s a whole host of such devices and apps to choose from and parents are freely turning to them. But does this impair reading habits in anyway? Gautam John of Pratham Books, who’s been a strong advocate of social publishing and digitised content, feels that it’s the contrary, actually. “Reading isn’t linked to the medium. Here, content can be frequently updated. And with faster broadband, 3G speed, low costs of digital content and devices, we’ll see this trend growing in India in future.” Brij Singh, founder and CEO of Apptility, who also digitised Pratham Book’s free content for downloading into iPads and other e-readers, backs John on his take on e-books. Singh has two daughters aged three and a half and six, and a 14-year old nephew who are hooked to e-readers. “There is a very high recall factor for stuff they read on Kindle or on iPad. Due to the animations and the audio impact, they tend to remember details they e-read. It’s great for kids just about to start reading. Books take some getting used to. Here, because of the audiovisual cues, there is quicker appreciation for words. And also kids have a natural curiosity about new media. They love the novelty of it and it provides them with an added exposure to written words,” says Singh.

India is a novel market as far as e-books are concerned since there are so many languages to choose from. This is both a challenge and an opportunity for publishers, feels John. “Very few publishers have access to content in multiple languages. So developing content for e-readers is limited to the language they trade in. But at the same time, there are new devices coming into the market, prices are going down, pushing up the accessibility of such devices. And there is definitely an increasing purchasing power. It makes sense to cater to this growing section of readers and explore the cache that vernacular languages have to offer,” says John.

For now, feels John, the e-readers are limited to a minority. But it won’t be the same in future. And as long as they get the children to develop a healthy respect for words, it’s a boon, rather than bane, for parents.