E-Book Reader Remote

For a long time now I have wanted to read while exercising on a treadmill. However, up until recently I have never been able to make this a reality. The issue I had with trying to read paperbooks for example was two fold. The first problem is keeping the book open. Keeping the book on my page generally requires the constant use of one of my hands which is awkward while exercising. The other issue is the font size. If the book is being rested on the treadmill's or exercycle's control panel often times its further away from my eyes than I am used to. At this longer distance the words are too small for me to read.

I found a solution recently that works amazingly well. I brought my Kindle to the gym. For those of you not aware, the Amazon Kindle is an electronic device that uses an e-paper display. It is designed to read e-books. There is no need to hold it open to a page as it displays the same page until the 'next page' button is pressed. This solved the first issue. It also allows the font size to be increased fixing the second issue. The cherry on top is that I am also able to put my music on the device and listen to it while reading and exercising.

It almost was perfect.

The problem was the 'next page' button. I was constantly needing to lean forward and press the button. It was not nearly as bad as needing to hold a book open to a page, but it was still disruptive. More than physically disruptive, it broke the mental mindset that I had while exercising.

I was thinking for awhile what a good solution would be. Putting page turning on a timer would be no good. There were a few intense points in my workout where my mind drifted and I found myself needing to reread pages.

Likewise voice activation would not work well. There is too much background noise, and people would quickly get tired of saying "next page" over and over again.

So I decided the best option would be if the device had a remote control. All it would really need to do would go forward and backwards in a book.

To be useful and not a burden or hindrance the remote would need to be small. I almost feel that working it into some sort of sports glove would work best. Clenching the hand could be the next page signal.

Ultimately all the various manufactures of e-book readers need to do is make their device capable of accepting remote signals from paired devices. The design of remotes could be left to third party companies. This could open up their devices to a whole range of new uses.

For example, there is the situation already discussed above. However, another use situation could be allowing a lecturer to discreetly keep his or her notes on the e-book device. For beach goers, the device could be safely kept in a sand/water proof transparent case while still allowing control through a cheap remote control.
I'm sure there are a number of other cases where having a remote for an e-book reader would be useful.

While it may not be intuitive, after all who ever would want a remote control for a book, e-book readers are NOT books. That is why people are willing to shell out money for the devices. However, I know that I would be willing to personally pay a decent sum for this ability in a device.