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King's New eBook 232

Posted by Hemos from the releasing-to-the-world dept.
NoProb writes "Yahoo has a story that describes Steven King's new book Riding the Bullet, which will be released in electronic format only. It also states that Barnes & Noble will be giving the book away for free today only. After that it'll cost you $2.50 to download it. " OK, sure the first major book in electronic format is cool, but part of the story that I thought is interesting is that Softlock, who's actually doing the selling part has buckled under the strain. The demand for electronic information continues to grow.
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King's New eBook

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  • Re:Anyone get there EBook emailed to them? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I just got email from B&N that I can dowload it for free it at some url [edited].

    If you recall, they promised a PDF format initally.

    However, they did about face and now they offer it in glassbook reader format only!!!

    No PDF format, and the Glassbook reader of course
    does not run under Linux.

    I personally think it is a breach of contract.

    I encourage people to email tell them what you think about releasing products which does not run
    under linux. Their emails are :

    service@barnesandnoble.com

    support@glassbook.com

  • Re:Anyone get there EBook emailed to them? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I got the same thing, that URL for getting it as a glassbook. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get glassbook running, it bombs out with a a vague "unhandled error" message that glassbook support hasn't been able to fix. Glassbook currently looks like a piece o' crap both in design and implementation. When are these companies going to give up on the notion of pay-per-view for all IP?

    B&N said they were going to send out PDFs. If anyone got a PDF please mirror it with the warning that only those who did try to get it on the free day should download it. I'd like to read this allegedly free book but I've already paid for it several times over with my free testing of that crappy glassbook product.
  • Both gv and xpdf will display PDF files, however they both sometimes do a poor job with fonts (jaggies galore).
  • >Uh, bzzzzzt... this books is available *ONLY* in electronic form. You
    >can't go buy a paper copy unless someone prints it out. Maybe you
    >should read a little more carefully before you try to get that "first
    >post" out there. :)

    Big fucking deal. Ever hear of fanfiction? There *ARE* hoards of fanfiction authors who are better than King. Take a look at UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES (http://www.eyrie-productions.com/) for instance. Another one is Magnesite's anime & fanfiction page (http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/1810/) These people have been doing this kind of stuff for *YEARS* now.
  • Uh, bzzzzzt... this books is available *ONLY* in electronic form. You can't go buy a paper copy unless someone prints it out. Maybe you should read a little more carefully before you try to get that "first post" out there. :)
  • Installing Acrobat generally also installs a plugin that allows you to open PDFs in your web browser window. Your web browser will then tell servers that it's able to accept Acrobat files. You don't have to give permission for the browser to tell the server that, any more than you have to give permission to accept JPEGs or HTML files.

    Note that there's also a "GbDetected" field; apparently their reader works the same way.

  • This "protection" still doesn't prevent someone handy with notepad from simply reading it and retyping it someplace else, thus making it non-protected. This is what I plan to do once I can actually *download* the stupid thing, so I can simply keep a copy and not have to deal with this stupid protection crap.
  • Can I get an eBook as a present for someone? Do I have to give them my computer too?

    ...richie

  • My bed or couch seems much more comfortable than reading in front of the screen. But I will give it a second try when a Crusoe powered electronic book/webboard is available.
  • My huge problem with e-books in general is that these books are the same or MORE expensive in downloadable format than the hardback version. Take a look at B&N and check out King's "Hearts In Atlantis"...it's under $20 for the hardback $23 for the downloadable version. I sure would like to be able to pull this into my pilot, but if I'm going to drop $20 bucks on a book, I'll take the hardback.

    It reminds me of CD's and DVD's: new media that dramatically cuts production/distribution costs over what they replaced, but the price to the consumer actually goes up....beauty deal!
  • "And here's a chilling thought for you: If this idea takes off, then why should authors ever need to deal with book stores (or publishers) at all? He could just sell directly to his end customers. With electronic media, the only infrastructure and retail store you need, is The Internet and a server."

    Indeed. Facilitating this seems to be the mandate of fatbrain's eMatter service, where authors post material, write the copy, and set the price. All Fatbrain does is provide the encryption and transaction processing and the central place to buy them.

    Of course, this isn't really the end of publishing as we know it. After all, there's the concept of brand (I make different assumptions about an O'Reilly title vs. a "Bla bla bla Unleashed" book), both for publisher and author. The information you have about a book purchase is incomplete, after all, and in such cases, reputation matters. Reputations can be bought via advertising, and are earned through reviews.

    It's a giant trust network. I trust most of the reviews i see in the New York Times, and one of their reviewers trusted publisher X enough to read a book by author Y, who publisher X trusts by reputation, sales, or actually having read the text. Thus i feel like a review in the NYT tells me enough to know whether or not i'd like the book. This is where Amazon's reviews fall down; there's such a variety of reviewers (the public at large), that i can't really trust the positive reviews (although they seem to be addressing that with pages of reviews by the same person now).

    As for this story, I'll be reading it on my Rocket eBook [rocket-ebook.com], a portable reader. Very nice.

  • Other books [barnesandnoble.com] Stephen King has released (not for free) in electronic form:

    The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
    Hearts in Atlantis
    Bag of Bones

    mahlen

    Napoleon: What shall we do with this soldier, Giuseppe? Everything he says is wrong.
    Giuseppe: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right.
    --George Bernard Shaw
  • Douglas Clegg released a new chapter of his unpublished novel 'Naomi' every month between May and September 1999 for free. It is now being released on paper.
    Naomi [douglasclegg.com]
  • Hehehe, thanks for the suggestion. I just ordered a Palm IIIxe today. It'll be nice n' roomy for all my texts. And I can't wait to play around with all the other software and even write some of my own. (It would be cool to see a stackless Python interpreter on PalmOS...)

    I really wanted a Palm when they first came out and were beyond my means. I kind of forgot about them for a while, then I realized I had been wanting one all along when thinking about 'e-books.'

  • B&N are widely seen as the real enemy - they are the ones going around and causing all the independents to close down.
    This is inevitable in a free market economy. That's why you don't see too many mom & pop grocery stores around today.

    Unless a store can find a niche, or offer something superior to the big stores, it's not going to last. My dad had a used bookstore [netlinkcom.com] for a few years, but he never made any money off books.

    What I like about small/specialty shops is that they *know* the subject matter at hand, and can recommend a book for my particular situation. Also, I'd rather buy a used book and save some money if I don't know exactly which one I want to buy.

    If there's a specific book I want, I'll look in used bookstores. If I can't find it, then I'll probably order it thru Amazon. (They've successfully found 2 out of print books for me.)

  • Paranoid is a nice shade of periwinkle.

    Saying that simply because it's only $2.50, these companies don't want/need the money is rather silly. For a company valued at many, many billions of dollars, Microsoft sure does seem rather picky about whether or not I've pirated a $50 game, eh?

    Occam's Razor...looks good on paper, doesn't seem to work out all that often in practical application. Life is amazing that way...all too often, the most simple answer is BLATANTLY wrong. Oh well...

    -Jer
    -Jer

  • Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but does anyone else think that perhaps Softlock purposely made sure that they couldn't support the amount of traffic they expected, so that less people would get the free book, and more would buy it?

    I mean, can you think of better marketing? Offer something free of charge for 1 day only, restrict the ability to access the free item so that maybe only 20% of those interested can get it, and allow them to sign up to buy the book when the site "frees up". Not that I begrudge them their $3, just thought it was rather brilliant if that's what they did.


    -Jer
    "If Windows is the answer, it must have been a stupid question."
    -Jer
  • Well, even so there's Bruce Sterling's Hacker Crackdown [eff.org] that was published online...

  • However, the moneyed players(Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et. al.) have been allowed to give the book away, effectively shutting us little guys out of the promotion.

    Has any explanation been made as to why those players are able to give it away? Is King being paid for those copies out of B&N's pockets? This sounds fishy.

    And here's a chilling thought for you: If this idea takes off, then why should authors ever need to deal with book stores (or publishers) at all? He could just sell directly to his end customers. With electronic media, the only infrastructure and retail store you need, is The Internet and a server.

    BTW... Hail to you, Page One! I live about a mile away from your store. Funny, though, I shop at your Page One Too place (your old shop across the street) more often. I have a feeling I'm not ever going to see an "ebook" there...


    ---
  • ....I can't believe that no one posted that softlock is running apache on linux. ;-)
  • bookstar, if it's the one you are talking about, is a national chain. in fact, i believe it may be owned by barnes and noble. i cannot locate a reference to support this, however.

    i think this because i worked at a barnes and noble in college, and when i started i was fed a bunch of garbage about the company's history. this included the list of chains that barnes and noble owns (such as b. dalton, etc). i could swear it included bookstar.

    - pal
  • isn't that routine? does anyone here NOT have a hotmail (or yahoo) account that they only use to give an email address to websites that require it for one reason or another? (ahem, slashdot..)

    when i was installing tiberian sun, i set up westwood's online game thing, and it _required_ an email address to send me a password. so i put in blahblah@yahoo.com. it told me to shove it; they don't accept freemail accounts. this really pissed me off. who are they to say what isn't a valid email address? what if i _only_ had a freemail account? (anyway, i wound up making a sendmail alias, receiving my password there, and then deleting it).

    - pal
  • xpdf [foolabs.com], which is GPL'd, comes with pdftotext, a simple utility to (you guessed it) convert pdf files to text.
  • For those of you going to Barnes and Noble thinking you are doing the right thing in boycotting Amazon - you're not. In the bookstore business, B&N are widely seen as the real enemy - they are the ones going around and causing all the independents to close down. There were over 5,500 independent bookstores in the U.S. in 1990 - today there are less than 3,500. We can thank the chains, and especially B&N for our new lack of diversity of information sources.

    Well first off, I don't think the Amazon boycott has anything to do with bookstores. It has to do with what we believe are unfair patents. They have two patents which really are unrelated to bookselling (Affiliate Program and One click purchasing). The fact that they sell books is secondary. Patents are the only reason that *I* personally am boycotting them, and I do feel that I'm doing the right thing by going to BN or Borders, or whatever...

    The patent issue is much larger than the allegation that BN is pushing small stores out of the scene, because it affects more than just booksellers. It has an effect on everyone who does business online.

    We need to let Amazon know that what they are trying to do will not be tolerated in the online community. This is a chance to show that in the online world, the real power is with the community, and not with business and money.

  • For those Unix folks, probably one of the most technical savvy ppl on the net, ie. likely customers - the glassbook reader supports :
    Windows blah blah, ie 4.0 blah....

    You would think that they would a least provide a UNIX reader (or can someone point me to one...)

    tom.
  • Reducing it to an argument of price/competition is a short-sighted view of the Market economy. Large corporations will always win in the price domain when they have to. ...

    I agree that the traditional argument that "the market will take care of it" is much too simplistic for real-world analysis. I don't think the examples you picked are very good though. Well, DeCSS might be, since the real fear of the MPAA is in defeating of the region code trap.

    In any case, big corporations are beholden to their shareholders. In the real world, this means that they try to maximize profits. This precludes any view but the zero-sum game, where competition must be destroyed or co-opted. This is where it gets fuzzy, because they bring in lobbyists and lawyers to create, twist, and subvert legislation (and legislators) to their advantage. This inherently prevents a free market from performing any corrections, since it's not technically free any longer.

    Bringing this back on topic, eBooks will only succeed when and if the big corporate publishers feel that they have adequate protection against these books being copied. Obviously, they feel that they're at this point -- although I'm curious about the PDF formatted ones. Do they have some security built in? What's to keep me from copying 'em? Do you have to be network connected to read them?

  • www.elecbook.com/ebfree.htm
  • My book (http://delmoi.dhs.org/re [dhs.org]) May be published online only, if I ever get it done (first two chapters done). Not that this really has anything to do with the discussion, but I thought I'd post anyway :P

    This isn't to say that I wouldn't publish offline, but...
  • The make process is on unix, Therir infistructure is NT. There code is almost certanly ether MFC, or some crossplatform widgetset. Ether way, there isn't really any porting going on at all...
  • Vader@sith.imp gets me past the automarketing machine. Of course they can't send me it in PDF if I miss out. Oh well.
  • From the Barnes and Noble site: "King Size Demand" -- Sounds more like marketing than anything else. Funny... their distribution system is so overloaded yet it can still spit back that "Try again later" page darn quickly...

  • Funny... their distribution system is
    so overloaded yet it can still spit back that "Try again later" page darn quickly...

    Well, yes. If you want to be picky, it's a 403 permission denied message (watch your browser's status line). That doesn't necessarily preclude that they panicked from a heavy load and chmod'd it.

  • Alexlit.com appear to be selling it in PDF format, so it's not essential to get a -specific- reader, at least. You can choose your propriety reader! ..wow, consumers really -do- have freedom eh? (sarcasm)

    Alexlit comment that the PDF protected by softlock though, so the paranoid security goons are having their way again.

    Ah well, I might buy it when the hype dies down a bit.

    Zara/Morf

  • I believe ghostscript was derived from reverse egnineering of the ps and pdf formats. http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/ pdf2ps -->ps2ascii-->manipulate? [wisc.edu]


    john
  • Download Acrobat Reader here [adobe.com].

    I believe that Ghostscript also reads PDF files, though I wouldn't swear to it, since I've never tried it myself.

  • King has published loads of novellas. Off the top of my head, Shawshank Redemption, The Body, The Mist, The Langoliers, Apt Pupil, The Long Walk, The Sun Dog, and The Breathing Method. In compilations, admittedly, but you can't say that the book wouldn't have been sold.

  • OK, I take your point about the batteries, but why does an eBook have to flexible and disposable? I don't think I've ever thrown a book away (unless it got really manky, in which case having it in digital form is a plus) and I don't sit there bending a book either.

  • Yep. Bill Gates "The Road Ahead" book was on the CD-Rom that came with the printed book. And you can read Brave New World [ddc.net], or any of the books by these Authors [literature.org] online too. Plus 1984 is somewhere on the net, but I can't remember the link.
  • Close but no cigar. The Hacker Crackdown was printed and then put online. You have to pay for the printed version but you can download the online version for free. This isn't the same thing. This was written and published entirely online. You can't get it in printed format at this time. The only thing that I can think that comes close is Gibson's poem Agrippa that he had distrubited on disk.


  • What color is paranoid anyway? But yes, you're paranoid. If you want it then enter your e-mail address and have them send it to you. If they don't then don't buy it. How fricking hard is that? And do you really think that B&N, Amazon, and/or Softlock are that hard up for $2.50 as to pull a stunt like that? It's the simple fact that it's free, the free offer was posted on several major websites and now their servers are getting slammed with people trying to get a copy. Occam's Razor.


  • Yes it did. But the protection was broken rather quickly and now you can find it online. Good poem too.



  • Did somebody actually look at how Glassbook is doing it? It downloads a short description file in XML, then based on that tries to download a certificate for the Glassbook reader, and then downloads the file itself.

    From a cryptographic point of view, if you don't need a network connection each time you read the book, then the encrypted content and the key must be on the same machine, not unlike DVD's CSS. Does anybody have ideas about how to write a little utility to decrypt the encrypted PDFs? Just for research purposes, of course.

  • SQUATDIDDLE... Help, I'm drowning...

  • There is. Its called a e-BOOK
  • TRY FATBRAIN.COM'S eMATTER

    WILDE PUBLISHING [fatbrain.com]
  • TRY FATBRAIN.COM'S eMATTER. IT WORKS FOR ME!


    WILDE PUBLISHING [fatbrain.com]

  • eMatter is definitely on the up and up.
    See my e-site:
    WILDE PUBLISHING [fatbrain.com]

  • eMatter on Fatbrain.com have not been slow either in their quest for furthering the work of citizens of the mighty pen.


    In fact when they began their "digital" universe (last October I believe) they openly supported the ebook revolution. See: http://www.fatbrain.com/ematter/home.html

  • Actually my own eMatter is doing rather well... http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp ?theisbn=EB00002427 Stephen King, eat my sh.....!

  • Horror Story: books become pay-per-view (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ABC News sez: The technology behind the [Rocket or Glassbook] "eBook" format means it can't be printed out or even distributed to friends once downloaded. It can only be read on the computer that received it. Readers can e-mail the document to friends, but the recipient can only read the first seven pages before being asked to purchase the story.

    So what do you get for paying $2.50? Isn't this just making books into pay-per-view entertainment? Is this what we want to have happen to the future of the book, that it be locked up in a format that is illegal to break into, unreadable even 70 years after King's death, when it enters the public domain?

    AP sez: "This is really the first effective market test," said Keith Loris, president of SoftLock.com, of Maynard, Mass., which provided the technology to download the book to retailers. "Up to now, this has been technology in search of a market."

    And it still is. This technology of publishing books electronically is old. This book doesn't provide anything other than the text that is in a paperback or magazine; no pictures, sound, or all that computers can provide. What is new is the horrifying idea of locking them up with technology such as SoftLock's, and making it illegal to share the book with your friends. Their technology offers absolutely nothing for the consumer nor even the author.

    If we help out SoftLock or Amazon or Barnes and Noble in their quest to get control over all electronic reading material, we all lose. If we violate King's copyright by making it available to others (even if they own a copy that doesn't work on their Mac), we just encourage these corporate types who yell that strong encryption, shrinkwrap licenses, and all that stuff is needed beyond just copyright, to control how we readers use "their" products. If we ooh and aah over the technology, instead of seeing how the technology is being used to screw us, we fall right into their corporate hands.

    I'm waiting until this book reaches my favorite used book store before I buy it.

  • If you believe the homogeny is good, shop walmart.
    If you don't care about the growing gap between the lower and upper classes, shop walmart. If you don't want to support the people in your neighborhood, shop walmart.

    Competition does not include doing such things as lowering your prices until neighborhood businesses go under, then slowly raising them back to normal again. This is of no benefit to anybody. It simply reduces the variety of stores available by preying on people who think they'll always get the better deal they're actually only getting for a year or two.

    That kind of thing is standard, and I've seen often as I live in a portion of suburbia that's just recently starting to get noticed by the big chains. Suddenly the variety has gone downhill and we're being homogonized. I'm thankful that I live in a neighborhood which has enough income that so far, we keep the little stores alive nicely.
    ----------------------------
  • If you want to read the King story on your Palm organizer or Windows CE device you can get it from PeanutPress [peanutpress.com].

    I've purchased a lot of ebooks from PeanutPress and have been very happy with them. PeanutPress has the best book reader for the Palm, and they even provide a Java based tool for converting text documents into a format compatible with their reader.
  • JUst curious - I presume the special reader software will limit other programs from accessing it? Meaning that common access packages to help sight impared people won't be of any use.

    This kind of content may soon be illegal in Northern Ireland where equal opportunities legislation is much more extensive.... Of course - that's if they can ever sort out thei little problem about not wanting to give up guns.
  • Hopefully this is somewhat on topic. I'm looking for recommendations for a portable electronic book. Something like the rocketebook [rocketebook.com], though I've heard that particular one is not recommended due to a variety of reasons.

    The most important factor to me is support of open standards. can I easily upload content that I've created to my ebook? Can I easily translate postscript or PDF documents to the required ebook format? Conversely, can I translate my open ebooks into postscript format for printing?

    The next most important factor is price; I don't want a laptop, I just want a nice, simple and legible screen to read text on. The more lightweight the better.

    After that, we're talking content space (how many pages of text can it hold?), battery life, and display quality.

    I'm seriously thinking of buying some kind of ebook in the near future, but I want to make sure I don't invest in brain dead technology. My primary concern is open standards and open document exchange.

    Thanks in advance!

  • I feel that $2.50 is overpriced for a, what, 60-page novella? That's close to the cost for a printed full-color 120 page magazine delivered to a store near me. Granted, they get less advertising income than from a magazine, but production and distribution are orders of magnitude less expensive (the publisher is handing most of those costs over to the resellers running the websites).

    This is typical of the electronic distribution schemes I see for music, etc: they're just too greedy. And in the long run, it costs them money and denies them a major opportunity. Here's why:

    Books today cost an arm and a leg. New paperbacks run from 5 to 10 dollars, nearly double the cost a decade ago. As a result, readers are sticking to the authors they know, because it costs too much to speculate on an unkown author and maybe get burned. This is why Stephen King and etc. are doing okay, but the midlist and lower end authors who aren't household names are getting crunched hard.

    The problem is, this leads to market shrinkage in the long term, because hot authors grow cold, or at least taken for granted, and then they don't sell as well. If people haven't been experimenting with new authors, when their fave gets boring, they stop buying as many books. You need the consumers to keep discovering new authors to keep the market from collapsing.

    E-books are a really good solution to this problem. Firstly, the production and distribution costs are orders of magnitude less than for printed materials, so publishers can reduce the costs and still get their slice of profits. The overall cost can be reduced to the point where, for consumers, it becomes a viable impulse buy. I'm thinking around $1.00 (American).

    Secondly, e-books are inherently ephemeral. You just don't tend to keep them around, because you're reading them on a handheld with limited storage space. Sure, you could store them on your desktop computer, but it's the computer, you don't sit in front of it to relax and read. It's the same reason why, once we got a DVD player in the living room, I stopped watching movies on my desktop DVD drive. You want the experience in the surroundings designed for it.

    Lastly, E-books are likely to actually drive sales of printed books. If you do read an e-book you like and decide you want to own, you'll probably want a paper copy. For fiction, at least, a nicely bound copy you can take down off the shelf is a lot more satisfying than some bits on a computer somewhere. Moreover, if prices are cheap, you'll be a lot more likely to find new authors you want to read, and that's a vital thing for the publishing industry to foster.

    Jon
  • I downloaded the Peanut Press reader for my TRGpro after a cow-orker showed interest in this King. I also downloaded the Hacker Crackdown for it. Gives me something to read on the bus.

    Anyway, if I download this free version from B&N using Glassbook, will I be able to load it on my PalmOS device, or am I stuck with some stupid "copy protection" like, say, Mjuice. (That's if I can even download it through our proxy. I haven't been able to download from Mjuice since the second version of their software was released...)

  • Can anyone tell me why the URL for downloading the ebook after I've installed the Glassbook reader detector control contains; http://server1.glassbook.com/fulfill/... ...GbDetected=&GbVersion=&GbBuildNumber=&AcrobatDe tected=&Submit... (URL shortened so I don't screw up the page). When did I say I would allow the control to check for Acrobat, or anything other than the Glassbook reader? Can anyone follow this up?
  • Stick it on your Palm? Doubtful. As far as I know, nobody's come out with a PDF reader for the Palm yet. I've looked.

    Your best bet would be to buy it from Peanut Press. $2.50 isn't a bad price, especially considering that some of the books on there are selling for hardcover pricing. Or better yet, wait 'til their next email newsletter comes out (bearing a $1 off per book promo code) and get it for $1.50. The Peanut Reader's not a bad little program.

  • To those that argue that the purchase money isn't working locally, I would disagree - the amount of money spent is being offset by the large workforce that these companies have. So yeah, while a refrigerator split between ma' and pa' is a big chunk of change, there's an even bigger chunk to be had by 30-40 employees working at the bigger stores.

    Your analysis is seriously flawed here. The Buck Stops with Mom-n-Pop. For one thing, the chunk is not any bigger because 30-40 people are getting a few cents. In fact, it's smaller. Because after these minimum-wage earners get their pittance, a bunch of that profit goes up the pipe to corp - and their shareholders. Oh yeah, those minimum-wage earners don't own any stock, trust me.

    This is why the Wal-Marts of the world do take money out of the local economy. Not only that, but by taking that money to shareholders and "corporate citizens", they further widen the class divide.

    As for "unfair practices", Wal-mart's sheer size allows it to undercut anybody they want to. They can lose money on a store in order to eradicate the competition. Maybe that's fair, and maybe it's not, but either way - it sucks.

    The real problem is consumers. They don't realize that by pinching a penny here, and saving five minutes there, they're shooting themselves in the foot. Suddenly, everyone without a college education is making min-wage, at a shitty job, where the boss doesn't care about who they are.

    Then crime goes up, and people start getting high on smack, and the police force starts cracking down, and Mr. Wal doesn't have to care, cause he's somewhere on his Yacht.

    Maybe a little extreme there, but there's truth in my exaggeration.

  • Breakthrough blah Electronic distribution blah blah publishing blah blah blah old media blah blah slow download blah marketing blah blah...

    So, is the story worth reading?

  • You can also get it in .PDF format if you give B&N your email address. It's the choice that scrolls off the page (on lower-res monitors). Under the rocket eBook link.

    Just tell your mailer to put everything from barnesandnoble.com in /dev/null and they won't bother you ever again.
  • Of course there will be, and people will use the same stupid arguments they use while they are downloading their illegal MP3s...

    1) Man, the publishers make all the money, not the poor authors who only make .25 per book, so I'm not hurting anyone
    2) There's only a few good pages in each book, why should I have to pay for the whole book.
    3) I've gone out and bought lots of books after reading pirated versions, so they shouldn't complain.
    4) I don't have the money to buy all the books I want to they really aren't losing a sale...
    5) Piracy is such a loaded term... use "unauthorized copying" (thanks RMS!)


  • While it is nice that Stephen King releases his new book electronically, many classical works have been available at the Gutenberg project [gutenberg.net] for a couple of years now.

    A large number of e-texts, which will cost you literally _years_ to read. And they're all free and legal...


    ----------------------------------------------
  • If you leave aside the copyright issue (which is probably different for any other country), I suggest to standardize DTD's for all kinds of texts (novel, short story, poem, song lyrics, play) and convert the existing etexts to XML.

    Although there are tons of texts available, most of them are distributed as HTML with lots of unncessary layout. Often they are split over many small HTML files which makes it hard to download them (not everybody has low online costs).

    Once you have them stored as XML files you can create different XSL files to view them the way you like them or print them if that's what you want. In combination with an XML parser it might also be very easy to convert them to some proprietary binary etext or word processing format (if you really need that). With the transformation language for XML it might even be possible to automatically convert a complete novel to LaTeX and get some nice PostScript file!
  • There is a PDF viewer at tucows.com for EPOC (e.g. Psion devices), which is a port of xpdf. I guess that program takes some MB's of memory, which might be too much for a Palm. Or just nobody ported it to Palm OS.

    Go see the EPOC version's homepage at http://www.xs4all.nl/~svdwal/Pdf/Pdf.htm
  • I've been looking at the Glassbook formats, it seems it uses PDF's, however they're encrypted, or cyphered with EBX. Seems pretty straight forward, I've got a way to pirate the books from one persons reader to anothers already... So much for encrypted access control. Do people never learn?

    -- iCEBaLM
  • Why don't you write to Mr King about the unfairness to the small eRetailers? I listened to him talk a few days before Halloween a few years ago in St Louis and he spent quite a bit of time bitching about the big money book stores and how they were killing the new authors. He talked about how his wife could always get her books published, not because they were good but because she was his wife. He also thinks that the way modern publishing works people like Mark Twain would never get published at all. He understands the risk of loosing the small book sellers.
  • they [B&N] are the ones going around and causing all the independents to close down.

    How are they doing this? Applying illegal or unethical business practices? Or are they offering larger, nicer stores, cheaper prices, and Starbuck's coffee? Your quote implies one business luring customers away from other business is a bad thing. That's business. If you can't take it, find another.

    Personally, when I want to buy something I look for the cheapest price and good service. If B&N has something cheaper than Mom's Books then I'll probably buy at B&N. It's up to Mom to offer something more than B&N. It's not B&N's fault that Mom can't compete.

    I understand what you are saying; I just don't blame Big Business. In Atlanta, we had an awesome bookstore called Oxford Books that had everything and lots of strange stuff. You could browse all day. But they went out of business because they weren't moving all their stock. They frequently over-ordered books that only a few people would buy. Is that B&N's fault?

    Don't blame Big Business. Instead, try zigging while their zagging.

    -tim
  • The first electronic book I ran across was Halcyon Days [dadgum.com], back in 1997. It comes as a bundle of HTML files, but still gets sent out on diskette (which is cute in a retro sorta way :)
  • I'm not sure what's fair or right here. But I think the tendency of big chains to displace mom-n-pops is definitely insidious.

    When I was young, long ago, there were mom-n-pop American restaurants all over the landscape. Quality varied from very poor to very good. But the notion of American food culture was not a complete oxymoron as it is today. The symbol of our culture is indisputably MacDonalds, and that worries me.

    The same tendency can be seen in all areas the huge mega-corps move into. Yes you get fast cheap and efficient service but you also get a a bland lowest common denominator product with little choice. This is especially harmful with chain bookstores where new authors and authors in less popular genre have a hard time surviving trying to sell to the chains that understandably concentrate on the money, which is in bestsellers or well known authors. Maybe most of those authors would never develop an audience but a significant portion would given exposure thru market diversity.

    It is easily and perhaps correctly argued that all this is the result of natural consumer choice. But it seems to me more of a deadly feedback loop where people don't miss what is no longer easily available, and even become more resistant to new and different experiences and products (called brand loyalty by some.)

  • (Ignore prior non-previewed post)

    they are the ones going around and causing all the independents to close down.

    I hear this argument quite a bit, yet in my town three years ago a Barnes and Nobles moved in three blocks from a good independent bookstore....and it is still there.

    This argument about "less diversity" is, to be blunt, pure crap. I've been an avid bookshopper for almost twenty years and I can say flat out that things have not been better in terms of the diversity of books that can be bought than they are right now. Even ignoring the online retailers. I remember, in the late eighties, being amazed that I could finally get all of those obscure Aliester Crowley novels that I'd been looking for. Where? A Texas based chain called "Bookstar". I remember being amazed at the selection of SF at the new Barnes and Nobles that opened around that time. The only SF section that was better was 150 miles away.

    I remember being a teenager and having difficulties finding anything but the most mainstream SF, little in terms of history, etc. To get anything better, you had to drive to a used bookstore, and there it was still hit or miss. Now, with these book superstores on every corner, it is a hell of a lot easier to get what you want.

    Truth is, the independents that are going out of business are mostly the bad ones. The good ones can stay in business with one of these "superstores" nearby.

  • they are the ones going around and causing all the independents to close down.

    I hear this argument quite a bit, yet in my town three years ago a Barnes and Nobles moved in three blocks from a good independent bookstore....and it is still there.

    This argument about "less diversity" is, to be blunt, pure crap. I've been an avid bookshopper for almost twenty years and I can say flat out that things have not been better in terms of the diversity of books that can be bought than they are right now. Even ignoring the online retailers. I remember, in the late eighties, being amazed that I could finally get all of those obscure Aliester Crowley novels that I'd been looking for. Where? A Texas based chain called "Bookstar". I remember being amazed at the selection of SF at the new Barnes and Nobles that opened around that time. The only SF section that was better was 150 miles away.

    I remember being a teenager and having difficulties finding anything but the most mainstream SF, little in terms of history, etc. To get anything better, you had to drive to a used bookstore, and there it was still hit or miss. Now, with these book superstores on every corner, it is a hell of a lot easier to get what you want.

    Truth is, the independents that are going out of business are mostly the bad ones. The good ones can stay in business with one of these "superstores" nearby.

  • Think long and hard about what is possible at public libraries.
    You'll be suprised how many people read a book without
    actually paying for them.

    *GASP* PIRATES!! DIE LIBRARIAN SCUM!

    ;)
  • So, is the story worth reading?

    According to this review [usatoday.com] in USA Today, it is a worthwhile read.

    To add my own comment, I purchased the text in Palm format this morning from Peanut Press [peanutpress.com] and had no problems with the download or installation (aside from having to free up some space on my Palm V). $2.50 is a small chunk of change if it will encourage other authors to follow suit. I don't have the time to read King's longer novels, but a 66-page short story that I can carry on my Palm V is right up my alley.

  • Adobe does do a bit of portwork, albeit mostly Mac. You can snag the Acrobat Reader for Linux/Mac/Sun/AIX/etc from their website www.adobe.com [adobe.com].
  • As soon as I read that I had a bad flashback to college and having to wait for Wintel PS 4 whilst my buddies with 'slow' IIFX were already enjoying all of its yummy goodness..

    I suppose I've fallen into the same trap of disillusionment Bill Gates lives in..
  • Reverse engineering wouldn't be necessary if people would use an open standard format (i.e, the Open Electronic Book Initiative). See the proposal at
    [openebook.org]
    http://www.openebook.org/specification.htm
  • I am wondering if there was some brave soul who has a copy of the free body who would be willing to either pst or e-mail me a copy, link?
    This actually sounds really cool considering that it's so cheap and also on the net so that means that it's entirely easier to quote save or e-mail parts to people for various reasons, far better than having to do what gutenberg has to do and essentially rip books apart and then scan them in with OCR.
    What format does this use? PDF? PS? text? does it allow for multple versions for different platforms? seems like the site selling it dosn't appear to have much more info than you can enter an e-mail address and buy a copy.
  • Well, I must thank King for being ther first author I've heard of to do this e-text thing, and I hope others will follow. I'm not sure if reading books via the computer screen would be that comfortable though, unless there's a Palm-sized unit with lots of battery power and an easy-to-look-at-for-long-time-periods screen. I just can't see sitting at a desk reading an e-text, nor sitting a laptop on your lap while you're laying out on a couch/bed reading.

    And to that first poster (J23SE), where'd you pick up e-texts of Tolkien? I've never heard of a legal Tolkien e-text, but if they are legal, where'd you find them (i.e. gimme more info, please).

    Eruantalon

  • Amazon is giving away also the book. You have to download a reader that runs only on Microsoft OS. Veeeeery stupid.
    Read it here [amazon.com].

  • I am a little confused as to the formats that the book comes in. First there is the Rocket eBook which is a pretty nifty thing. Second is from Barnes & Noble called a Glassbook format. Third, from Softlock it appears that the book is in pdf format.

    For me I would think that the pdf format would be the best since I can transort it to just about any platform. But I am wondering how they enable the copying protection that they mention. I have never heard of any type of copying protection like this available through a pdf file.
  • Any ideas regarding what the best file format is? For many of us that read ebooks, ascii is the preferred format, as it can be formatted for any situation (can be read on pc, formatted to a Palm, etc...), and stands the best chance of being a valid format in the future.

    For me, the big holdup in ebooks is the format. I wouldn't buy a hardcover book that would be unreadable in 4 years, so why would I accept that in an ebook? I'll just stick to the Gutenberg Project, rather than support limited formats.
  • Correction: This isn't really the first major book in electronic form... It was the first to be specifically written for the net, but I have electronic copies of several (Animal Farm, etc... even some Tolkien!) J!
  • The version I got was from a joint Glassbook/Amazon.com deal. no trouble at all to donwload, but I already had Glassbook. The Glassbook reader appears to be a skin on top of Acrobat Reader 4.0, with some proprietary additions for security. They have a herd of free e-books on their site too, www.glassbook.com
  • I interviewed with and ebook company once. They seem to support the same ideology as the RIAA/MPAA of content access control. The CEO told me rather proudly of a new law coming to effect that would help them achieve this end. I know now that he was talking about the DCMA. The book would be encrypted and could only be read with a licensed reader, on a licensed machine, and unprintable. I know that I for one DO NOT wanna have to sit at my computer all day to read something. Maybe I wanna lay in my bed and read where it is more comfortable, and better for my eyes. Oh but wait I cant print it out! Maybe I wanna move it over to my laptop and read it on a plane/bus/train trip. Ah ah not unless I pay for it again! (read DIVX). And if my machine dies and I wanna put it on a new one.... well you would have to pay for it again. I think I still prefer the good old normal print edition. That way if I wanna borrow my buddys Dragonlance or he wants to borrow my LOTR we can do it.

  • So, who's up for reverse-engineering the various eBook file-formats? I'd like it much better if I could print the file out or manipulate it as I please and know that no one is tracking what I'm doing with it.

    I wonder... Has the PDF file format been reverse-engineered by anyone? What about any of these "eBook" file formats (GlassBook Reader, Rocket eBook)? I once looked inside a PDF file with a binary file editor, but all I saw was a bunch of numbers and weird stuff. A bit like a PostScript file, but deliberately obfuscated.

    I really dislike the idea of only being able to read the "book" on a "licensed" machine. Read the message on SoftLock's website [64.14.67.123]-- "Enter the email address of the computer where you plan to read the story." I'm not sure how they're authenticating, but I don't like it.

    Something else to try: get the PDF version, then, for each page, copy and paste the text from the book into a text editor, and save in your format of choice. This may or may not be possible, as Acrobat does have the ability to stop you from copying and pasting.

    I realize this could be construed as encourging copyright infringement, but read Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read" at Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.net] before you flame me.

    P.S. If the link for SoftLock didn't work, try this one [softlock.com]. Sorry, I can't get a direct link to "The Right to Read"; Project Gutenberg seems incredibly slow at the moment.

  • I love carrying a book around in my pocket via palm pilot, but I agree about the tactile appeal of a book. When all is said and done, I'd rather have an electronic copy and want to print it, than a book copy and want to scan it.
  • Well I have a thought even the biggest techno-geeks I know still like to read large quantities of text on paper, so while Steve King wins one for eletronic information, people (like me) are still going to print it to text.

  • Why $2.50 is a good deal (Score:3)

    by Arkanis ( 11949 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2000 @12:33PM (#1202828) Homepage
    I live in Canada. $2.50 to me is $0.25 to most people. Heck, yesterday I saw someone burning five dollar bills to keep warm.

    But wait, it's probably in American money.. ack, there goes my days salary.

    -Ark

    "He who goes to bed with an itchy ass wakes with a smelly finger." - Prince Charles

  • New urban legend (Score:3)

    by chandoni ( 28843 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2000 @05:08PM (#1202829) Homepage
    My daughter & I had just finished eating some chocolate chip cookies at an internet cafe & wanted to do some light reading. Because we love Steven King, we decided to browse a copy of "Riding the Bullet". The first chapter was so excellent that I asked if I could download the rest of the book. With a cute smile, the waitress said "sure, for two fifty". I said "just add it to my tab".

    Thirty days later, I received my VISA statement from the internet cafe, and it was $265! I looked again and remembered that I'd spent $5 for the cookies and about $10 for connect time charges. As I glanced at the bottom of the statement, it said "eBook - $250". Boy, was I upset!!! I called the accounting department and told them that I thought the waitress had meant $2.50. But they said there was nothing they could do and that I could go pour hot grits down my paints. Therefore, for revenge, I'm emailing a copy of this book to everybody on the internet, so nobody else will be fooled by this scam again.

  • Barns & Noble is backed up too. (Score:3)

    by romco ( 61131 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2000 @12:20PM (#1202830) Homepage
    But you can give them your email address and they will email it to you. (we will see )

    Here's the link
    http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bookshelf/ebooks/k ing.asp?userid=4LN6ZHK7W8&srefer=

  • Competition? (Score:3)

    by levl289 ( 72277 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2000 @01:33PM (#1202831) Homepage
    OK, hear me out before you mark me as a troll and/or flamebait.

    There are many people that argue big business is putting out mom-n-pop stores unfairly. Not only in the book industry, but in regular goods; stores like Wal-Mart, Tower Records, and Blockbuster.

    Now, I'll be the first one to say that the above-mentioned treatment is unfair (the big online book-sellers getting the goods first), but in the big picture, is there really a problem with these big companies?
    If I can go to B&N and buy myself a book for several dollars cheaper than I can at a mom-n-pop, I'm not gonna think twice about it. If I can go to Wal-Mart, and get myself a lawn mower for less money, same thing. Of course there's unfair trade practices, which I'm generally against, but business is business, and the lowest bidder gets mine.

    To those that argue that the purchase money isn't working locally, I would disagree - the amount of money spent is being offset by the large workforce that these companies have. So yeah, while a refrigerator split between ma' and pa' is a big chunk of change, there's an even bigger chunk to be had by 30-40 employees working at the bigger stores.

    Specialty stores will always exist if there's a need for 'em. I buy records (you know, vinyl?), all the time, putting my money into an industry that should have tanked about a decade ago...

    But I digress, if geeks are supposed to be libertarians, you should be able to see this all pretty clearly w/o me.

    (BTW, if you have stories of unfair practices by said companies, please post them - I'm always open to learning :).

  • Glassbook (Score:3)

    by Eric Seppanen ( 79060 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2000 @12:45PM (#1202832)
    Oh, goody. Let's all run out and support Glassbook, who's trying to push the same "secure copyright distribution" crap that the RIAA and MPAA are.

    Think there's ever going to be an open source reader for their EBX format? Think again. I'll take dead trees over Big Brother.
    --

  • Can I host an online book on a libraries homepage? (Score:3)

    by antiquark ( 87200 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2000 @01:10PM (#1202833)
    Most likely not, but obviously people who can't afford the book, or dont have a computer, can't read this book.

    Usually when you don't want to, or can't buy a book you borrow it from a library, with an _e-book_ this isn't possible. This is an issue that needs to be solved I beleive.

  • Re:Competition? (Score:3)

    by Pinball Wizard ( 161942 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2000 @02:06PM (#1202834) Homepage Journal
    This is a clip from an older news story, but this lawsuit is still very much active. For more information, see http://www.bookweb.org/home/news/btw /2883.html [bookweb.org]

    For us at least, its just a matter of wanting an equal playing field, not preferential treatment because we are a smaller business. And in reply to those that assume that the smaller stores will have higher prices, well, all I can say is we get a lot of traffic from bestbookbuys.com [bestbookbuys.com]because our prices are often the best - without a big advertising budget, this is one of the few ways we can get exposure.

    March 18, 1998, Tarrytown, NY - The American Booksellers Association (ABA), on behalf of itself and more than 20 independent bookstores, announced today that it has filed an anti-trust lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Barnes & Noble and Borders. The suit alleges that these large, national chain stores are using their clout with publishers to obtain secret and illegal deals and preferential treatment. The lawsuit further claims that these illegal deals put independent bookstores at a serious competitive disadvantage and pose a threat to their survival and to the diversity of American bookselling. The suit contends that these illegal dealings come in many forms, including soliciting special discounts on both large and small orders, the granting of more favorable promotional advertising terms, threatening large returns to obtain extra discounts, and other illegal dealings. Further, the suit alleges that these activities violate a federal antitrust statute, the Robinson-Patman Act, passed in the 1930's to protect small and independent retailers from unfair competition by chain stores. According to lawyers for the plaintiffs, this is the first time a group of independent businesses and their trade association have used this anti-trust statute to fight back against large, national chain stores.

  • Re:King's eBook (Score:3)

    by bloody_sputem ( 162948 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2000 @02:18PM (#1202835)
    Yes, but B&N engage in unfair business practices. Like opening up a bunch of stores in an area, selling books at zero profit for a year until the independents go out of business (they can't compete on the volume or volume pricing), then close down all but one store where they bring the prices back up to normal.

    B&N have also engaged in intimidation of employees trying to unionize.

    What's worse, however, is that they're all part of the same huge media conglomerates as the publishers. Gradually, access to independently published works will become so hard as to be unavailable to the bulk of people.

    Reducing it to an argument of price/competition is a short-sighted view of the Market economy. Large corporations will always win in the price domain when they have to. When they don't have to ... well, those prices won't stay low. The classic view of the Market correcting things (i.e., if they jack up the prices, indies will bust in on their business) just doesn't hold up to examination -- look what happens when someone threatens, say, the recording industry or the motion picture industry. If you read slashdot, you've seen these stories...

  • "book" my butt (Score:4)

    by spreer ( 15939 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2000 @12:47PM (#1202836)
    This 66 page work is better classified as a novella than a novel. When King (or anyone other best selling author for that matter) chooses to release a full length work online rather than in print, it will be a much bigger deal. Paying for short fiction online is nothing new. You might have been able to find something of this length in Omni online before it tanked. Before you start swooning and proclaiming "print is dead," consider that this work probably never have appeared in print. A novella is an awkward and difficult length. To short for seperate publication, but too long to be carried in a magazine, this piece probably could only have reached the public in a collection or, more improbably these days, serialized in a magazine. Is it any wonder that his publisher went along with it? This is just a cagey attempt to get a wider readership for it (as well as getting him a rep. for being "cutting edge") And more power to him. That said, I doubt we'll be seeing his next full length novel anywhere but in print. Then again, maybe he was just getting his feet wet before a full scale dive into electronic media. Who knows.

    spreer

  • Also at chapters.ca (Score:5)

    by tomblackwell ( 6196 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2000 @12:39PM (#1202837) Homepage
    You can also get it for free at Chapters.ca [chapters.ca]

  • File Formats and O'Reilly (Score:5)

    by _Sprocket_ ( 42527 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2000 @02:23PM (#1202838)
    In the interest of credit where its due - its interesting to see a mass-appeal author publish direct to an electronic format. But shortly after that first nod, we find a slew of questions... what format is it? What platform can I read it on?

    Although it is a different situation... I would give O'Reilly more credit for pushing forward electronic publishing than the current King release. The CD Bookshelf series (covering subjects from Unix to Networking to Oracle/SQL) is a collection of O'Reilly technical books on a subject all bundled on a single CD. With example code. A search engine. And its HTML.

    Yes... HTML.

    No special OS-specific readers; no additional software. Fire up your favorite browser and go. Yes. Even Lynx. Want to search your collection? The search engine is JAVA. A little more involved in some cases, but still quite cross-platform.

    Of course, the great thing about this collection is the ability to get at a large amount of data quickly, efficiently, and easily. Carry it with you. Load it up on your laptop. Mount it in your home system and SSH in to run lynx or w3m and browse. But there's another portability issue that O'Reilly's bold move to HMTL provides that other e-book proprietary formats do not.

    You can access the data you paid for in any way that's usefull to you.

    People have already pointed out they're not about to get comfy in front of their PC to enjoy a book. And its not likely to happen with a bulky laptop. I've found my Palmpilot makes a very functional platform for comfortable reading (others have complained about the size of the text - YMMV). Ahh! But I don't want to cram one of those large HTML browsers and the HTML file in to my limited Pilot's memory. No problem. A quick HTML to DOC conversion and I've got a few select chapters ready for handy reference away from a network or to study in the comfort of my living room chair.

    I mentioned that O'Reilly has made a bold move. Their choice in a very functional, but technically unprotected, file system is an interesting one. Hasn't their use of an easy-to-copy format opened them to piracy? I've asked the question of Tim O'Reilly himself in more than one forum. No answer. But you'll note that they have continued to update and expand their CD Bookshelf offerings. Perhapse they know something that remains a mystery to even the publishers of Steven King.

  • King's eBook (Score:5)

    by Pinball Wizard ( 161942 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2000 @12:29PM (#1202839) Homepage Journal
    I run one of the online bookstores [page1book.com] that is selling the eBook. This was suppossed to be a fair method of distribution, with each bookstore participating in Simon & Schusters promotion having an equal opportunity to sell the book. However, the moneyed players(Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et. al.) have been allowed to give the book away, effectively shutting us little guys out of the promotion.

    I feel that this is a bad sign for the first major fiction publication that is strictly electronic. If you care about the future of ecommerce, don't just give all your money to the big guys! Ensure that smaller companies can survive on the internet by patronizing their businesses as well. Otherwise we will end up with an internet that is totally dominated by big firms.

    For those of you going to Barnes and Noble thinking you are doing the right thing in boycotting Amazon - you're not. In the bookstore business, B&N are widely seen as the real enemy - they are the ones going around and causing all the independents to close down. There were over 5,500 independent bookstores in the U.S. in 1990 - today there are less than 3,500. We can thank the chains, and especially B&N for our new lack of diversity of information sources.

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