What if Harry Potter 5 Was an E-Book? 428
hakkikt sent a link to a highly speculative what if story on Harry Potter 5 as an E-Book.
The suggestions are pretty extreme- going so far as to saying that this
one book could change the fates of the publishing industry, book stores,
and could even make E-Books more then a pipe dream. Personally I'd
love to see it available digitally, but I still want a real hardcover
copy, and I can't imagine hundreds of thousands of kids staying up
late at night with laptops under their covers instead of the far more
traditional book & flashlight. Food for thought, but I can't really
take it seriously.
I thought it was crazy, but ebooks rock. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I thought it was crazy, but ebooks rock. (Score:5, Funny)
The only problem is I was scared to read in the tub.
if you drop a book, they usually dry out and you can still read them (even if they smell like bubbles)
my palm pilot probably won't work afterwards.
Another problem, it's really tough to get the authors signature on an E-Book. I suppose they could use a pgp signature, but somehow it's not as nice or collectible.
Re:I thought it was crazy, but ebooks rock. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I thought it was crazy, but ebooks rock. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I thought it was crazy, but ebooks rock. (Score:2)
Those who claim that they prefer paper-based, obviously have not tried to carry more than one paperback novel. I picked up my wife's accouting book for her MBA class last night, and put it to weigh, it's a darn 12-pound brick! Those poor college/high schhool students would really welcome electronic version of their text books. Remember your school day, and those books you had to carry around?
And I will welcome to have my whole library on a stamp-size microdrive. I don't know how many good books I had to give away when we moved. It's a shame.
Re:I thought it was crazy, but ebooks rock. (Score:2)
Re:I thought it was crazy, but ebooks rock. (Score:2)
Or maybe they just can't afford to buy the 400$ USD 'software'cover version
Not flamebait. I'm just curious what the financials are? How much is an eBook, and how much is a suitably equipped Palm? Where do they meet, in terms of number of books, where you recoup your investment on the Palm?
Re:I thought it was crazy, but ebooks rock. (Score:3, Interesting)
My guess is that unless you read a book a week for twenty years, you'll never recoup your monetary investment on the Palm. However, there are some "hidden savings" and "extras" that might make it worth the price.
For example, if you're going on a plane trip, and only bringing one carry-on bag, and you want three different books to read (or refer to), it can be a real hassle to stuff them between your toothbrush and your underwear, and then try to fish them out mid-flight.
Also, although some people use bookcases as a staple of decorating, they do take up a lot of storage space, and much of the value of a residence is calculated based on its square footage. No bookcases might mean the ability to have a pool table.
Then, of course, there's the time and gas mileage involved in driving to bookstores and picking up books. Sure, this seems inconsequential, but it's the thing that makes people buy books in the first place - two trips to the library for every couple of books they read just doesn't make up for the time savings of owning your own book that you don't have to return.
Finally, and most important - your eight year old neice will never, ever squash a nasty booger between pages 182 and 183 of an eBook.
The primary argument against eBooks, really, isn't so much cost as the old truism "people don't like to read off a computer screen." Well, that's probably going to be true of nearly everybody born before 1970, but for my part, I'm sure I've read five times the amount of text on Slashdot alone that I've read in paper form over the last two or three years.
Re:I thought it was crazy, but ebooks rock. (Score:2)
Of course, I still have 'em, and whenever I move that is the chief headache. But, even if they didn't have a certain intrinsic value to me, I couldn't toss 'em because bibliophiles seem to value them. [abebooks.com] (that is pretty pricey; Needful Things seems to have aquired some of my private documents, too, though, I can't for the life of me remember to whom I gave that stuff).
An E-Book would ease my moving burden, and eradicate the collector's market. Good thing? Bad thing? I don't know. I would miss the "feel" of a book, its heft in my hand that still gives me a feeling of having accomplished something by writing it. I'd say that's priceless, but a credit card company fucked that word up.
Re:I thought it was crazy, but ebooks rock. (Score:2, Insightful)
Ed Roman's "Mastering Enterprise Java Beans" is also a free book available at theserverside.com [theserverside.com]
BTW: After going through them online, I went ahead and purchased the tree versions as well. From the looks of the amazon.com sales rankings, so did a lot of other people. Perhaps this model is not *that* bad for book publication.
Re:I thought it was crazy, but ebooks rock. (Score:2, Insightful)
Try it, but pick a short book first. (Score:3, Interesting)
But then I gave it another shot, reading Twain's Huck Finn. Much better.
I agree with the original post- give it a try, it's enjoyable. But don't pick Les Miserables as your first ebook. Pick something shorter and lighter that doesn't require a lot of backpaging to figure out what's going on.
Re:Try it, but pick a short book first. (Score:2)
So what do you do when you read a book that *does* require backpaging? The annoyance is still there, the problems are still there...
Try installing study notes (Score:2)
So what do you do when you read a book that *does* require backpaging?
If you install Spark Notes, Barron's Notes, Monarch Notes, or Cliffs Notes for the book you're reading, you have summaries of what you've already read at your fingertips.
Re:I thought it was crazy, but ebooks rock. (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe it's just me, but that sounds like it would hurt quite a bit. *poke* ow! *poke* ow!...
I'd probably pick another analogy if I wanted to sell the ideas of e-books.
Annotation feature (Score:2)
The major headache with any form of electronic book is that you cant put a bookmark on it....
Blame copyright owners for turning off annotation in the e-books you, erm, licensed.
(Im forced to remember a phrase/number and search for it to get something similar to a bookmark ...)
If you can annotate an e-book, you can simply name your bookmarks BMBM and then do Find Again until you're at the right spot. A good reader will display the text surrounding each annotation.
Of profit and hype (Score:2, Informative)
This is hype. There's no way the publisher will go for this option. I mean, publishers are for-profit organizations last I checked.
Once again, this is nothing more than wishful thinking. I agree though, it'd be interesting.
To clarify (Score:4, Insightful)
Something that wasn't (I think) clear from the
I think you'd find a vast amount of interest in hacking e-books, putting the documents online (or at least on a local hard drive), and then printing them out for distribution among one's fellow fifth-graders. Not everybody's mommy and daddy can afford to buy an electronic bookreader.
How about their palm pilots? (Score:2)
Re:How about their palm pilots? (Score:2)
I used to feel the same way, but now I have a hard time reading physical books. I set up the Weasel reader (formerly GutenPalm) on my Handspring so that it scrolls automatically (screen wrap style) and now I can read for hours without having to move a muscle. The backlight means I can read in bed without waking my wife, and I can carry a wide selection of books around with me all of the time. I can even do keyword searches (try that with a book). The real problem so far has been getting reading material that was worth my time, but between baen.com and the Gutenberg project I have managed to keep myself pretty well stocked.
I am a fairly new convert to the Palm platform; I have only owned my Handspring for a few weeks, and I used to swear that reading on a handheld would never take off. I didn't think that anyone would pay several hundred dollars for a gizmo that would allow them to read e-books. Nowadays, however, you can get an 8M Handspring for less than $100, and being able to read in the dark without waking my wife is priceless.
Ebooks become dead trees easily (Score:2)
Personally, I think book's should be published electronically (PDF and HTML please) and the old way, freedom of choice.
Geoffeg
Whoops, sorry (Score:2)
E-books packaged in the Gemstar, Adobe, or Microsoft formats are encrypted and only decryptable with their special client software which doesn't allow for save-as-text, printing, or any such other useful feature that they think might allow users to violate their copyrights.
Microsoft's is especially bad, as it doesn't even allow screen readers to operate. Blind? Want to read books available electronically but not in Braille? Too bad. Furthermore, they encrypt the ebook against your Passport ID, so it can only be read on computers or PDAs that have been set up with that passport.
Adobe's is a special encrypted PDF that has similar "features", but I don't think it's quite as onerous.
In any case, you won't be getting any newly released books published (officially
Re:Whoops, sorry (Score:4, Informative)
www.baen.com has a bunch. You can get the titles BEFORE they hit the shelves. They come in several formats including plain HTML, and I own over 40 titles.
I love these people. I am horribly biased. They give me access to great books in many different convenient formats, and they trust me to be reasonable in what I do with them. No draconian anti-piracy crap.
I stand corrected (Score:2)
Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
I might even buy one of those gizmos.
I have long hated the concept of e-books. They're expensive, they forgo all of the benefits of a book, a pile of e-book ram cards is nothing like a shelf full of paper books.
But I might buy one if that was the only way to get the next Harry Potter book, and I suspect that a lot of other people would, too. I'd hate having to do it, mind you, but it would be an amazingly cunning, effective way to get the readers into a broad range of people's hands.
God, I hope it doesn't happen, but "wow," nonetheless.
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
Title? (Score:2, Funny)
Until the time when... (Score:3, Insightful)
I would expect the same reaction (Score:2, Funny)
He about had me arrested for even thinking such a thing.
Harder to burn e-books (Score:4, Funny)
I could see... (Score:2)
It wouldn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It wouldn't matter (Score:4, Interesting)
if the Harry Potter eBook contained video, sound, games, etc.
Gee, if you want these on your book, I'd say you should watch a movie and play the video game. At our home, if I'm reading a book, no one is allow to talk, make noise, or make any movement. Even the bug in the backyard is not allow to hum.
Seriously, a good book should let your imagination run. It shouldn't need that kind of esthetic add-ons. Except for text books, which you might want to have some kind of interactive exercises, etc.
I'll take plain-text ebook anytime.
Re:It wouldn't matter (Score:2)
On the other hand, feel free to produce a bundle I can buy where you include a simple e-book, a collection of MP3s, maybe some behind the scenes stuff as MPGs, perhaps some screen savers for a few platforms and some nice high-res still photos I can use as wallpaper. All in a nice copyprotection-free format so they actually work -- you can't guess how my system is setup so every bit of added complexity risks the product failing to work on my preferred devices.
Killer hype (Score:2)
(For many breakthroughs, the killer app is either pr0n or some military application. The latter might work; some U.S. Navy ships carry literally a ton / tonne of paper documentation. I think we can rule out the former.-)
Did I mention it won't happen?
Re:Killer hype (Score:2)
The Navy has been trying for over a decade to reduce shipboard paper-based systems with very little sucess. The primary problem is that they (E-books) don't really work well other than for serial reading. Flipping through several books, comparing documents, keeping notes on troubleshooting or maintenance progress.. Quite frankly computers and E-Books don't really cut it. (OTOH for database or ledger based work, (spares inventory, personell records), the computer can't be beat.)
When they make computers and E-books as easy to scan as having three books open on the workbench, maybe then. (And don't tell me about windows, (as in having them open, not the Microsoft software), the computer screen is far smaller than my field of vision.) I've used both systems and, at least at sea, paper is superior.
Not everything can, or should be computerized.
Re:Killer hype (Score:2)
We had some nasty environmental and operating requirements, too... My favorite was the explosive atmosphere test!
What if Harry Potter 5 Was an E-Book? (Score:5, Funny)
Harry Potter has subliminal messages! (Score:2, Funny)
It was like having a hypnotist whispering "you love this book" in your ear while youread. Really odd.
Making the books electronic would make their mad schemes even easier, since they can actually flash subliminal messages, which is a lot easier than encoding them with some arcane method into the text of the book.
Its true! I'm sure it is! How else could I get so engrossed into a kiddy book?
The wonderful portability of an E-book (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you can copy and paste long sections! Well... usually not, when I come to think about it.
Hey, I know, you can print out a couple chapters to read at leisure! Oh wait, you can't do that very often either.
At least you can copy them onto your PDA and read at will... can't you? No? Oh.
Bedtime reading to my daughter... (Score:2, Interesting)
She looks over my shoulders as I read and when I'm finished I place the bookmark back in and slowly close the book. Her eyes are closed before I can put the book down.
Try THAT with a laptop.
Re:Bedtime reading to my daughter... (Score:3, Insightful)
I bet if you had a decent eBook reader, smeing handheld, she would still unjoy it. Clearly she has related closing the book with going to sleep, but you could accomplish the same thing with a cover.
Plus, you could change the font type and size, and definitions, add personalization, all kinds of stuff that would make it easier to readit on her own. Depending on age, obviously.
The key is in the reader. When I read to my son(4), He prefers to have me lie down next to him, and we both look up at the book while I read.
finnally, congratulation on taking the time to read to your children. we all benefit from that.
It would be suicide. (Score:2)
Reading onscreen (Score:3, Interesting)
While I don't particularly regret the decision, I have noticed that there is definitly a considerable amount of eystrain associated with staring at a screen for a few hours at a time, even on a LCD. It really is easier to read stuff on paper, and I actually think I comprehend stuff better when it is less stressful.
Also, you could make the point about just printing out ebooks....but unless you have access to cheap/free printing, that kinda negates the purpose.
While I thing etexts/ebooks are cool, I would choose a real book over an ebook anyday.
It could be done... (Score:2)
I read all Harry Potter's as e-books (Score:2)
The first one I read partially as a microsoft e-book in their clear type font. I must say the font really rocks and on my 6 year old 15" screen I could easily read at a meters distance in my lazy chair. The rest of that book and the others I read on Visor. It was very well doable.. Now I just feel guilty that I don't own the books. So I'll probably get them soon. But it reads very well, if the formatting is right. The concept works... but unless it is really cheaper, I want the cover to show that I have it...
What do you mean... 'IF'? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, it was a pirate copy and full of OCR introduced typos, but I sure as hell wasn't going to go spend my money on a kid's book, despite the hype.
I figured, what the hell. Let's see what's so interesting.
Much to my surprise, I was blown away. Harry Potter was a morality play couched in terms of a fantasy novel. There were some rough moments... like at the end where the bad guy gives away the plot.
(Rowling's writing has improved since)
Still, I was fascinated. I downloaded the second and the third, quickly reading through them and finding scathing comments about the classism, the futility of punitive imprisonment, and the state of charity in the world.
When I went to look for the fourth book, it was not available. Instead, I went to Barnes and Noble that evening and paid 21.95 for the big hardbound copy of 'HP and the Goblet of Fire'. Since, I've put down money for all 3 of the others as well.
If Harry Potter 5 is an e-book, neither Rowling nor her publisher should fear piracy. The people who would have bought the book will buy it anyway, and the electronic copies floating around will inspire a few more to buy it as well.
Re:What do you mean... 'IF'? (Score:5, Funny)
You have to be careful with pirated books. Next time make sure you download the spoiler-free version.
Piracy? (Score:2)
Sounds kinda silly.
Re:What do you mean... 'IF'? (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a really nifty place where you can get books for free. The only catch is you have to give them back after a while. It's called a "library." Wonderful for books you want to read once but not spend money to keep. Pirated e-book copies are pretty unneccessary.
Re:What do you mean... 'IF'? (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. Most of the popular books out there are available in one of the following formats: txt, rtf, pdf, html, or lit. You just have to know where to look
Personally, lit is pretty good (as long as you have a MS product to read it on), pdf is good and cross-platform friendly, and text works anywhere. :) Not that fond of html, since it makes books bulky (IMHO).
But that's just my $.02.
OTOH, she should fear piracy. The reason why more books aren't pirated is because most people don't know where to find them. Sad, but true. If people realized there was a large bookwarezing community, I'm guessing most would pirate. Sure, some would prefer the paperback copy, but not many. (I prefer both. For example, I might like a copy of "Linux in a Nutshell" by my computer desk at home, but a nice pdf file that I can keep on my laptop would be nice. Unfortunately, that book seems rare on the bookwarez sites, and I have no scanner, so I'm stuck with the unweildy dead tree edition.)
As I said above, just my $.02
Re:What do you mean... 'IF'? (Score:2)
Yep, that DVD-ROM is sure bulkier than that CD-ROM!
Re:What do you mean... 'IF'? (Score:2)
Yeah, that is cool. I wonder why no one has ever thought to do that before!
"Killer App?" (Score:2, Insightful)
eBooks will *never* catch on this way, though. The likelihood of any author (especially one so popular as JK Rowling) publishing a potential best-selling book ONLY in the fragile and pretty much non-existant eBook market is virtually nil.
Plus we'd all have to boycott Harry Potter because of the eeeeevil eBook maker's coalition (ya know, that whole adobe, FBI, dmitri skylakarov, and DMCA stuff
eBooks will, in my not-so-humble and actually quite arrogant opinion, never catch on until you can read them just as well as you can read books. This means terrific resolution, the ability to throw them anywhere, and definately cheaper readers. Resolution is really the key thing though. I much much prefer to read a newspaper, even with the nasty ink it ges on my hands, than a web page. Its just easier on the eyes. And my monitor is a not-too-shabby Apple LCD display. The digital-ink thing seems to me to be the key to this. But thats far off in the distant future (oh, sure, they have prototypes for bill-boards now, but nothing nearly good enough for, say, a newspaper).
Okay, so most of that was ridiculously offtopic (what was the question again? oh yeah. Harry Potter
As the author puts it :
"Jo Rowling [...] absolutely loves dear old-fashioned, manually operated, non-electronic storybooks."
Yeah, and from what I heard about the movie she isn't particularly affectionate with other technological "magic" either. So I don't anticipate a Potter eBook rollout soon.
Re:"Killer App?" (Score:2)
Why? Yeah, DMCA evil.... oooh Shiny Harry Potter e-book!
The Death of the Book? Not quite (Score:3, Insightful)
It would not be considered the legitimate sequel.
It would be the dreaded asterisk, as in: "Harry Potter has spawned 5* sequels" Then: "* Including one 'electronic' version of Potter's adventures."
There is nothing compelling about e-books. Nothing. As someone who has 1500+ books in my house -- everything from Faulker to Stephen Levy -- I can categorically state that the e-book is now, and forever will remain, a bastard child.
There's a reason "books" have survived for over 500 years. They're almost perfect: portable, lightweight, cheap. Easy to buy, easy to trade, easy to sell.
Indie bookstores will not shrivel up and die if Harry Potter 5 is released electronically. They'll just keep selling what they're selling, keep doing what they're doing.
Much as some folks would like to think it, Harry Potter is not the be-all and end-all of literature. The article seems to forget that books have a 500 year history. Rowling is today's top-selling author (or whatever she's considered) but she's not *tomorrow's top-selling author.* There will be plenty more J.K. Rowling's over the next decade or so.
And I think that's fine. More power to 'em.
BTW, can anyone actually imagine reading Proust as an e-book? I mean, maybe it's just me, but I find e-books incredibly difficult to read for sustained periods of time. It's not unusual for me to spend 8, 10, sometimes 12 hours reading a book cover-to-cover. It's hard enough to do with a "real" book (I can't believe I'm writing that -- a "real" book -- LOL) but can you do that with an e-book? Do you even *want* to that with an e-book? And imagine forcing yourself to read an large, long e-book for a class -- by an author you don't care for but that you're forced to read.
Faulkner as an e-book? Can you imagine it?
Hemingway, maybe. But Faulkner? Melville? It would drive one batty.
Anyway, this article is nonsense. No, that's not me spouting flame-bait, it's me just giving an opinion.
J.K. Rowling may be popular, but -- please -- she's in no position to "kill" the book. Or drive booksellers out of business.
ROTLMAO.
Re:The Death of the Book? Not quite (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, so did sailing ships and horses & carts.
BTW, can anyone actually imagine reading Proust as an e-book?
Careful Fauntleroy, you're gonna pull a muscle playing that pretentious twit act so hard.
Re:The Death of the Book? Not quite (Score:2)
Yeah, so did sailing ships and horses & carts.
Those technologies were replaced by something better, more efficient, etc. Not just because it could be done. At this stage of the game, E-books have no advantage over paper books.
Those that claim they have 'too many books' may be readers, but they are also 'pack rats' unwilling to clean out their shelves until forced to. (If the books were important, then you would not see their storage or transport as a problem.)
Re:The Death of the Book? Not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
Searchable. Indexable. Orders of magnitude smaller and lighter. Configurable display settings. Easier to transmit over distance. ALL of which stand to get better and better over time.
There are undeniable advantages to paper books, but to say there are NO advantages to ebooks requires monumental ignorance and probably a large amount of pompous holier-than-thou conceit.
Re:The Death of the Book? Not quite (Score:2)
And as someone with well over 5000 books in my collection I feel otherwise. I will never give up on paper-based media, but there is real potential for ebooks to suppliment(sp?) the experience in ways never possible before. Someone else mentioned interactivity, sound, images..
Or - recall that one of the biggies about DVD movies is the idea of picking scenes. Wouldn't it be neat to explore the *What if* concept most of us apply while reading a story? (Staying on topic)What if Harry actually dies? Or maybe *what if* Gandalf accepted the Ring of Power from Frodo- what if what if.. Ebooks could lay out the author's story as the equivalent of the "DVD Director's cut" and then provide extra material to play these games.
There are definately other real benefits. I read quickly - very quickly, over 2000 words per minute quickly. I'd love it if I could buy a paper book and get the ebook copy for $1-3 extra - locked to me alone even. Have you any idea of how painfull it is for me to bring a tome sized book along (War and Peace anyone?) for even a simple road trip and finish it before arriving at my destination only hours away? Then then to be bored crazy on my return? With ebook I could have multiples of books waiting for my attention.. And how about favorites quotes? I bet everyone recognizes "One Ring to rule them all..", but can anyone tell me the exact context of "..." kind of ability seems pretty cool to me..
Re:The Death of the Book? Not quite (Score:2)
In that case what you have is not a book on your Palm, but edutainment/entertainment software on your Palm. Not to disparage the software, but let's not confuse two very different things.
Have you any idea of how painfull it is for me to bring a tome sized book along (War and Peace anyone?) for even a simple road trip and finish it before arriving at my destination only hours away? Then then to be bored crazy on my return?
So bring along *two* books, or three! They don't take all that much room. Amd yes, I know the pain, and yes, I carry multiple volumes routinely on trips.
Re:The Death of the Book? Not quite (Score:2)
Oh, haughty nonsense! (Score:3, Insightful)
This works amazingly well with laberinthian computer books. I zoomed through the 900+ page JavaScript Rhino book, whereas the sheer density of the bound version put me off. Granted, that's not pleasure reading, and it is more than a convenience having a browser available while reading about JavaScript. Still, I have read several literary classics on my Palm (Frankenstein, some Mark Twain stuff). Have you even looked at Project Gutenberg? Why, there are six entries for Proust. Can you still not imagine it? I downloaded the complete works of Mark Twain (702K!!! ~25MB unzipped!!). I discovered a lot of material I had never heard of before (Hilarious stuff like "Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses"), and I have two huge sets (25+ volumes) of Twain's work! So you do disservice both to literature and the WWW with your comment.
Here's the problem: non-indexed PDF and PostScript e-books. This is so not the way to go. These are far inferior to printed books. Some of the e-books I have are PDFs pirated from the publishing industry, before the books had even been properly edited. Also, a fucking text file is a more flexible version than PDF and PS. Then again, I use xpdf and gv, which may lack some 'Find' feature that Adobe or other viewers might have. But I really love Safari. I just wish you could download them, and that they wouldn't try to pad their selections with multiple editions of the same book, outdated books, other crap, etc.
Also, why would Hemingway work & not Faulkner or Melville? It took me months to read Moby Dick, and it sucked to keep having to return it to the library and check it out again. Melville would love the Web, with all of his little digressions.
Re:The Death of the Book? Not quite (Score:3, Informative)
I can categorically state that the e-book is now, and forever will remain, a bastard child.
I categorically disagree ;-)
I posted this a couple of weeks ago, but it seems appropriate... Is it karma-whoring if you're capped? Whatever.
e-books Rock!
There are some devices out there that were designed to be electronic book readers, and they are *far* superior to PCs, Laptops and PDAs for this function. IMO, they're far superior to paper books as well in many ways (though not every way).
I have a Rocket e-Book, for example. It's a device that is just slightly larger than a paperback book, with a screen that is almost exactly the size of a paperback page. The screen is a very high resolution LCD with a backlight that can be turned on and off. It has 16MB of flash memory for storage of books and the (tiny) operating system. It connects to a computer via either a cable or infrared to download books, which are written in a simplified version of HTML and then run through a tool that packages and compresses them for download. The e-Book reader also has a high-capacity battery that allows it to run for as much as 18 hours on a charge. The UI is well-designed, with thin progress bar down the side to give you an idea of where in the book you're at, support for different font sizes, different orientations, etc., easy-to-use menus (which you almost never touch, other than to switch books).
This is a superb way to read. What do I like about it, as compared to paper?
What I don't like:
As you can see, the upsides are more numerous and more compelling than the downsides. The biggest downsides really have more to do with the fact that publishers haven't decided how to approach this e-Book thing. Here's to hoping they get it. soon.
Why not (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm only half kidding here. Maybe it's too soon for the next Harry Potter to go Ebook only but I'd wager that maybe releasing the next one this way might not sound so funny.
And they maybe could add some region encoding so that people couldn't read a book in England that was meant for sale to Americans.
In my day we had music disks made of Polyvinyl Chloride. And I didn't hear anyone complaining. And if you scratched one too bad. And you couldn't play them in your car either.
Re:Why not (Score:2)
books allready have region encoding, its called language.
More needed that just titles. Screens are poor. (Score:2)
First, they hurt my eyes to look at for entended periods of time. I hear that it is the refreshing on standard monitors and that LCDs are better since they do not refresh, but even LCDs give me eye strain.
Second, on LCD screens, they tend to be too small vertically, especially e-book handhelds. In dead tree format it seems like I get more vertical lines, but less width. Maybe it is just that I am used to that, but I find reading on a screen with the extra width more difficult than reading thinner columns. I think it is the retrace to the beginning of the line that my eye does and on longer lines it tends to be difficult (and I get lost frequently). I even wish that more web pages would be double columned.
Third, I think that there might also be a problem with the light eminating from the screen, too. I just notice that I am sensitive to how much light there is when reading and the direction of it. While a back-lit screen does provide light it is like a light bulb shining on your face when you are trying to read.
My fourth problem is glare in the screens. It is very easy to read a book with a light behind you, but you get nasty glare off the screens. Even with what would be ideal lighting for reading paper, screens still suffer glare.
The final thing keeping me form buying e-books is that you cannot mark on them. In literary book I tend to underline certain passages and make little pictures/doodles. In reserach docs, I make notes to understand it better as well as diagrams. As far as I know this is not possible with an e-book. Typed notes are okay, but not the same as a pencil.
I don't think that quality is a problem and I don't think that I need print quality to read comfortable, but I could be wrong on this too, all well as any of my other comments.
Don't use a laptop - PeanutPress works! (Score:2)
I don't see any reason why they wouldn't want to. The publisher would do well (since there's no paper cost) and can even reduce the price a few dollars (see "there's no paper cost"), Ms. Rawlings stays the Richest Woman in All England, and I'm happy, because I can read Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix in my meetings while looking like I'm taking notes on my Palm.
Probably (Score:2)
The e-book killer feature (Score:2, Interesting)
Water-proofing.
I would love to sit in a pool or hot-tub and read... you just can't do that (comfortably) with real books.
wrong book (Score:2)
You should have seen what they do with paper books before suggesting their partents to buy them $300 E-Book reader to read it.
Why not? (Score:2)
The Matrix did it for DVDs, why not Harry Potter for e-books? Come on, admit it! How many of you finally gave in and bought a DVD player because that was the only way you could buy The Matrix?
PLEASE PLEASE dont let that happen (Score:3, Insightful)
As a programmer/Web developer
My one love of the evening
I consider this *RESTING* my eyes after a day of irradiating them. E-books, not matter how much the geeky quirky appeal they have to me
First off
For me that give it a chance at being a $$ savings (if we forget about the pleasure of holding a book), but what about my fieance` who reads like 5 books a year ? would never be worth it!
The other big selling point of a normal book, is i can give it to someone else. [or
e-paper would make me doubt my stance
Electronic paper (Score:3, Interesting)
So what does this have to do with Harry Potter and eBooks. I don't see eBooks surviving for the plain reason that I'm not going to sit at my desk, lug around a lap top or even squint at a palm top to read a book. Not only that but the storage involved for a full book isn't small potatoes on my 2mb Palm. Keeping around 100 novels that I could read at will isn't going to happen.
However, with some more advances in the technology I do see electronic paper as a substitue. By downloading the electronic book from Amazon.com then sending it to my electronic paper, I can now read it like it's a real book. The advantage is that a) it's lighter because it can be a single sheet that just flips between pages b) it can have some features like remembering where I left off or giving me a summary of the book to jump around in and c) it's cheap (or should be by the time the technology gets there) and I can carry it around and even buy a book at a real bookstore, except that they'll just beam a copy of Harry Potter X to my electronic paper instead of getting a disk or paper copy.
I still don't think this will ever replace the traditional kill-a-tree approach to publishing, but it might be more acceptable than a traditonal ebook.
liB
Baen Free Library (Score:2, Informative)
One of my favorite authors, David Weber, participates and a couple of his books are available.
That said, I don't think a Harry Potter ebook would change the world. Schoolastic isn't going to release it in that format exclusively because it would be a bad buisness decision. After the relative flop that was Stephen King's ebook foray I doubt we'll see a major publishing house try it with one of their A list authors any time soon.
Digital Rights Management, Middlemen (Score:2)
As it stands now, a UK company most people have never heard of publishes the book, but that company doesn't have the distribution capability of a giant like Scholastic, so Scholastic distributes it in the U.S. and makes a bundle as a middleman. An e-book could be sold directly from the publisher's Web site, cannibalizing Scholastic's sales in the U.S. and souring relations between the publisher and its biggest (to my knowledge) distributer.
The greater fear would be piracy. An item as hot as Harry Potter and as small as an mp3 file would quickly find its way to P2P file-sharing. Heck, AOL users could email it to each other. To circumvent piracy, the publisher would implement some kind of digital rights management, but once it has its fingers in that pot and it realizes that technology can be used to charge people per read...
Bottom line: it's too messy an issue for the publisher to touch. They're sitting on a gold mine -- why risk tainting it?
Re:Digital Rights Management, Middlemen (Score:2)
"Would"?
Have a look for "potter" in alt.binaries.e-book.*, gnutella, or Morpheus. Choose from plain text, Word document, PDF, or spoken-word MP3.
Laptops under the blankets... (Score:2)
Slip 'em an iPAQ (Score:2)
But with an iPAQ you can snuggle down and read away
How do we trust electronic books? (Score:2)
But a text document is easy to alter, and the changes would be difficult to spot. How would you know you were reading the "real" version? I wouldn't waste my time downloading and reading a book from gnutella for example, because of the risk of receiving an altered version. This is one of the reasons I think that the book publishers don't have some of the same worries that music publishers do when it comes to distributing their products electronically. I can imagine ways around this problem, but it all comes down to being able to trust your source.
I know that the books won't be distributed as plain text, but for the sake of this discussion I'm assuming that someone will find a way to convert it to text.
Only if it had pop up adds to pr0n sites (Score:2)
my .02 and kids ebook recommendation... (Score:2, Informative)
That said, I always have an e-book on my Pilot.
Waiting in line to return something at a store? I've got a book to read. Bored at lunch? I've got a book to read. You get the picture. Will it replace paper books for me... never. Does it have it's place... absolutely.
And now the recommendations. You know the "Wizard of Oz." There are actually 40 books in that series (from 1900 - 1965) and many of them are available free on-line in English, Japanese and Esperanto. Legal to download AFAIK as the oldest aren't restricted by copyright laws anymore. The only drawback is that the Illustrations in the dead tree versions are half the fun and the English e-versions are simple txt files.
More info on the OZ series and links to the downloads are available at http://www.welcometooz.net
And of course Project Gutenberg has plenty of free e-texts available for download. http://www.gutenberg.org
Happy e-reading!
AOL Exclusive? (Score:2)
- Allow AOL users to buy it online and receive it two-weeks before street date
- Put excerpts of the first two chapters exclusively on AOL
- Offer a deal to buy the book cheaper with an AOL contract
They used these tactics with the Madonna Concert, and it was highly successful.Laptops under the covers (Score:2)
I'll be damned if my kids get a laptop before I get one, and I ain't getting one anytime soon!
cost summary (Score:2)
this will be great news for the ink and paper business!
$10 for the ebook. $5 for a ream of paper. $30 for an ink cartridge (do you actually think the average consumer is smart enough to invest in a laser printer?)
An e-book format that would sell... (Score:2)
This new "reader" is almost here - and when it comes, it WILL change the way we use and view books, provided it is cheap enough, can hold enough of the books, and that the books will be cheaper themselves. The format of the reader is ideal:
1) About the size of a paperback novel, but with hard plastic front and back "covers", and a plastic "spine".
2) Covers and spine hold battery, memory, and cpu for the reader, as well as a "docking" port of some sort.
3) Sandwitched in-between the "covers" are 100-200 "pages" of xerox (or similar) "e-paper". The paper is "bound" into the book in such a way to allow the book to lay flat (perfect for recipes and studying). Also, said e-paper contains stress/bend sensors along the spine edge to determine when a page has been turned, and which page it is. The e-paper also has touch sensitive spots on the upper and lower right hand edge of the page, both side (left edge on other "side"). This would facilitate bookmarking, zooming, scrolling and possible other features needed in the "book".
Such a book could have the text/images downloaded to it, and you could flip through it and read it like you would any other book. The e-paper would feel similar to a glossy style paper, and when you got to the end of the pages, if there were more in the book, close it, and open it again to see the rest (or hit one of the "tabs" to continue, perhaps). Flip the book around and you can read Hebrew. Flip it "vertical" and you can read one page with a picture above or below, landscape style - hang it on the wall, and it become a small calendar!
However, even though this is the "perfect" format (ok, even I know it isn't perfect, but it goes a long way, you have to agree), something that would make a lot of people want it and the books to go with it - there is a dark side to this technology:
Inevitably (actually, today) - if publishers could have their way, they would be charging and doing a "pay-per-read" system. They really hate the lending and reselling of books, in any venue - they hate the "first-sale" doctrine. What the new reader would give them could be a "pay-per-read" and "re-read" system: You turn the page, to read the next, flip back one page, and it is blank - need to pay for the whole book, or that page, to read it again. Or maybe they allow you to read each page only a few time, before it disappears. Suddenly, the book is no longer a "useful" thing anymore.
I don't know if such a development would cause people to drop it, or if it would be glibly accepted. I hope the former, I fear the latter.
Still, such a device could have an enormous impact, if it was kept open to use (to put your own books on, and no "pay-per-read" system), and cheap enough.
I suppose I should be glad that portable CD players didn't come out later - imagine having to pay each time you wanted to hear a track (yeah, I know - they are working on that, too)...
:(
I'd be legal! (Score:3)
Being able to grab the new potter book on ebook would just legalise the sort of content repurposing i'm doing already. And I'd probably still buy the hardcover for the wife and others who don't dig the digital.
E-books: Media hedgemony - enforced by "coolness" (Score:5, Interesting)
The media middlemen, such as publishing firms, want to keep themselves firmly entrenched in a world where their middleman position is becoming less useful to the consumer. They're doing a good job of it so far. The technique they are using is to use patent and copyright to control not just the content, but the way in which you are allowed to view it. But they've got to give those of us who give a damn about fair use a reason to ignore our convictions and accept the middleman's control.
The way they seem to be doing it is to force their control over all new forms of technology, thus leaving those who care about fair use with the awful choice of "stay obsolete, or accept our control - your choice". E-books and DVDs are both doing this. Since the new technology is also the restrictive technology, when people start adapting the new technology because it's really cool and neat, they end up giving up their control unwittingly. Eventually the old technology stops being supported. Movies start being available ONLY on DVD and not on tape anymore. Books start being available ONLY on E-book and not on paper anymore. Soon even those who are willing to stick with old technology to avoid the hedgemony don't even have that option anymore. The choice becomes one of "accept the hedgemony, or totally forego every work of culture and entertainment being put out and stay out of the loop."
This sucks. What do I do about the upcoming 4-hour director's cut of Fellowship of the Ring on DVD? I want very much to have it, and I don't mind one bit giving the money in the form or royalyties to those who created it, and to New Line studio for having the guts to put their necks out on the line financing it. But how do I do this without simultaneously supporting their part in the engineered the DeCSS slander, er, I mean "trial"?
And that's just the way they want it. They want to make sure that I cannot seperate the two. And thus, an obsolete system of middlemen who aren't needed anymore in today's economy get job security by forcing me to pick between giving up on fair use, versus giving up on participation in modern culture.
And of course, as a side effect of this, open source software *also* has to give up on participation in modern culture, and I think that's what irks me the most, actually. I don't think the media execs are really interested one way or another in open source. But they are interested in preserving the hedgemony through content control, and as a side effect that ends up meaning there can't be open source methods to access the content they put out.
Ebooks? Not till Electronic Paper Arrive (Score:2, Insightful)
E-books will not eat into the market for books until they are at least as good as real books. And I think that will only happen when electronic paper [sciam.com] becomes a reality.
"Good Enough" Technology (Score:2)
Take the toaster, since it's the perennial example of futuristic wired appliances. Sure, you could hook your toaster up to the home network so that your alarm clock starts it, then it goes out to the Internet to check the relative humidity so it knows the precise settings to use for your personal toast preferences.
Would that be cool? Heck yeah!!! Will we ever see them in large numbers of kitchens? Almost certainly not. Why? Because toasters, as they are now, are Good Enough at what they do for most people.
Books are the same way. Granted, for information stores like dictionaries or encyclopedias, searchable electronic versions are the only way to go, but for normal use and basic recreation, plain old paper books are Good Enough for 99.9% of the people in the world. Sure, there's some room for improvement in the format, but it is Good Enough at its basic function that most improvements would only be ancillary at best.
I think some people are misunderstanding this (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition, books are a very well established symbol of status. People love to have lots of books in their shelfs so they can give the impression that they are well-read people. How can E-books ever fill up your bookshelves?
What CAN be argued is that E-books might become a success in the way that it becomes a reasonable supplement to regular books. I can see this. Instead of bringing several heavy books with you on a trip, you can just bring one reasonable unit.
The books will still have to be considerably cheaper in electronic form, and not just a way to make more money, as the music companies seem to think about downloadable music.
Try putting the little ones to sleep with a laptop (Score:2)
[WHOOOOSH!] Notebook's fan goes into super-turboblast mode
[BING!] Low battery warning
[WHAAAAH!] Kid gets a priority interrupt and awakens from sleep.
[WHIrrrr....CLICK!] Notebook shuts itself down in a last gasp of self-preservation, leaving you with a screaming kid in a pitch black room.
or even better... you drone away endlessly and suddenly realize you are no longer reading about Sir Arthur, but are halfway through reading off the BSOD of a general protection fault.
Re:Have it talk (Score:2, Funny)
Even better. Couple it with a device that has voice recognition. It could read itself to itself. That removes us from the equation completely.
Re:If Harry Potter was an e-book (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If Harry Potter was an e-book (Score:2, Funny)
Re:If Harry Potter was an e-book (Score:2)
Ahh, but this isn't if the whole series was always e-book only, this is if one of the latter books in a very popular series was e-book only. Few parents would spend $100 for a e-book reader and $15 for a book (sounds like reasonable prices) when it is new, but if a book everyone expects is ebook only they would! Of course they would want some assureance that other books would be avaiable for their e-book reader, but that can be delt with.
Of course you have to be careful here. I would consider book-4 in ebook format based on how good 1-3 were, but considering how horribal book 4 was, I'm not even sure I'll bother reading book 5 in any format. (most people think book 4 was the best, but I hated it. YMMV)
Re:Dead trees rock my world. (Score:2)
I have some information about a special place for you - you may have even heard of it. They have these great places called libraries, where you get to borrow a book and read it for free. All you have to do is get a card and agree to return whatever you borrow, and you can read all of the classics that you want for FREE.
Re:Propoganda (Score:2)
Re:I'm convinced... (Score:2)
There needs to be some sort of model similar to that with MP3: buy the physical copy because you like it... rip to e-media for personal use only.
Re:The worst kind of discrimination (Score:3, Informative)
It's called college. And yes I only want knowledge clustered around the wealthy. They tend to vote republican and I intend to run for public office some day. I want the rest of the country to be dumb as a bucket of wet hammers. It makes it easier for the TV to tell them to vote for me.