Doctorow: Ebooks Neither E Nor Books 190
xanderwilson writes "Author Cory Doctorow has released his paper/speech for the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference this year into the public domain. A very interesting read about his experience with Magic Kingdom (which he is soon re-releasing under a more lenient Creative Commons license), the failure of e-books, and filesharing as a tool for creators."
Word wrap? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't think of many examples where I've prefered an e-reference over printed matter. The paradigm is that paper is portable and requires no power (aside from a light source) to read, never expires, never needs an upgrade (other than me needing glasses, which would apply equally in either case) and is durable (drop my Zaurus or laptop and I'll cry, drop my book and I'll just pick it back up.)
Complimenting e-books and paper seems reasonable, though I'll go to the paper first every time.
Re:Word wrap? (Score:5, Insightful)
Definitely, paper if you actually want to read the thing, electronic to give you more flexibility in using the text, as you and the author of the article mention. We all know what staring at a screen for long periods does to your eyes, even if you have a large, hi-res monitor. Given the choice of one, it has to be paper.
REALLY hi-res... and also the Mac (Score:3, Interesting)
1. While I haven't seen it myself, a professor of mine in college got a chance at some research lab who did display/rendering work to read a document rendered on-screen at 600 DPI (yes, six HUNDRED)! That's the exact same density as the pages your printer typically spits out. Consumer systems at the moment do what, somewhere between 72 and 96DPI on-screen? He said that all of his objections about eye-strain completely vanished in a moment.
2. Even for those of us who won't have access to on
Re:REALLY hi-res... and also the Mac (Score:5, Funny)
Funny, that happens to me every time I have to use a PC too.
Re:Word wrap? (Score:2)
Re:Word wrap? (Score:3, Funny)
450 words per second??? I had no idea Alvin & the Chipmunks had produced so many audio-books.
And despite 450 words per second, you're still only reading 3-4 a week?
Re:Word wrap? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless it's a computer book.. I know I've got books that act as references to software that no-one uses anymore because newer versions have come out, as well as references for APIs that I end up not using because expansions in newer versions have rendered it incomplete
It may be true, of course, that they've not become incorrect, and that they may be of historical interest, but that's all the use they are now, and it seems a great waste
Sure, it may not seem as natural to read off a screen as it is to read off paper (primarily, I think, because you can hold a book in your hand, and remember the position you were reading from by that reference), but I'd rather have E-books, or even a web page or stand alone reference program for that, as it avoids the wastage.
Re:Word wrap? (Score:2)
Unless it's a computer book...
Or a college textbook. It's particularly annoying when a university class requires, say, the fifth edition of book X, when the only substantive difference between the 5th and 4th editions appears to be inconsequential additions that throw the page numbering so reading and exercise assignment references by the professor^Wgrad student assitant are relevant only to the 5th edition. "No, you can't buy the used 4th edition for $40, you have t
Re:Word wrap? (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm... How big of a font do you use in your browser?
A lot of people have complained about the formatting, but I use an out-of-the-box Netscape 7.0, and it looks fine - Standard 80-column plaintext, just like you'd get from an old DOS text file, or anything from Project Gutenberg. No long lines, no funky characters, no gaudy color schemes...
Sure, making it a tad prettier wouldn't hurt, but I don't know why everyone has complained about it so far. Have people actually grown so used to having pretty NP fonts, with a nice background and internal hyperlinks, that they can't stand what once-upon-a-time existed as the dominant form of text on the PC?
Re:Word wrap? (Score:2)
The correct answer to this question is "a font size that's comfortable for me to read."
Perhaps on your desktop, 80-column text is easy to read -- but what about on my pocketpc/smartphone/tiny device? It can't display more than 40 characters per line even if I wanted it to...
Re:Word wrap? (Score:2)
Yes.
Re:Word wrap? (Score:3, Funny)
Ebooks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ebooks (Score:2)
More info on Cory (Score:5, Informative)
Also, his book is actually titled Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. More information about his original release of the book, and re-release with the Creative Commons license can be read on his blog, and give good insight into what authors can expect when they release a book with a less restrictive license.
Re:More info on Cory (Score:5, Informative)
The first was so successful, that he's releasing this one the same way - free to download, or buy the printed version.
Off Topic, but I'm curious (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Off Topic, but I'm curious (Score:5, Informative)
While releasing his books under a creative commons license worked well for him I wonder what would happen if a normal (read unfamous) person attempted the same thing. Would a CC license help an unknown writer or hurt their chances of getting a book deal?
IIRC, Cory was relatively unknown prior to the publication of Down and Out. He was known within circles of SF readers, but not so much in the coveted "mainstream."
By doing this crazy thing and releasing his book -- for free! -- online, he made some very big waves in the publishing world, and people started paying attention to him. As a result, Down and Out sold tons of dead tree copies, and I think the downloads are into the millions.
When I tried my hand at publishing, I wondered the same thing. Sure, some people may have known me because of my acting work, or because of my weblog, but I didn't know if it would translate into mainstream sales. While I didn't offer Dancing Barefoot for free download, it was mostly online already, scattered across two years of weblog entries. When my book was first shipping, I would get e-mails from people who said "I just read your site, liked what I saw, and consequently bought your book." Sure, it's not the same as giving away the whole book, but I think it's similar.
All those people who bought it (over 3000 in just under four months) caught the attention of O'Reilly, and now I have a three book deal with them. None of that would have happened without the Internet, so I think a CC license will definately HELP an unknown writer.
Re:Off Topic, but I'm curious (Score:2)
I guess this makes us the literary equivilent of sad copycat cam whores, then.
Here [pigpog.com], if you're interested in having a look - fictional story of an 80s boy band. Damn, there goes the whoring again...
Re:More info on Cory (Score:2)
"less restrictive" is not honest (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, anyone, anywhere, can take this work and do anything (noncommercial) with the work. Write a screenplay. Make a rap version of it. Write fanfic. Anything.
Although some franchises turn a blind eye to such activies (startrek fanfic, for example, is allowed to exist), Doctorow is, literally, giving us all a license to whatever we want.
In today's world of "sue first, ask questions later", this move is amazing and should be applauded. Good job! I hope that this proves to be a success, both from a creative perspective and an economic one.
Re:"less restrictive" is not honest (Score:4, Insightful)
The license it is now under allows for pretty much any non-commercial use. Basically, do what ever you want to with it as long as you're not making any money off of it.
Re:"less restrictive" is not honest (Score:2)
I'm not certain that's the case. You definitely have to obtain permission (obtain a license) to, say, make a screenplay version of a novel, even if you don't copy any of the dialogue verbatim.
"Stealing" a plot is also definitely a no-no. I can't re-create the movie StarWars shot-by-shot, only changing the characters' names and re-arranging the dialogue. (unless it's parody, which is usually protect
Re:"less restrictive" is not honest (Score:2, Interesting)
They didn't get into trouble; White Wolf and one of their short story authors tried to make trouble, saying "Vampire-on-werewolf action? Been done!" Their brief was pretty thin on the ground, IMO, basically implying that these cliches were White Wolf's invention when it was obvious both sources were drawing from a common pool of cliches. WW failed to get their injunction in court, and it all went nowhere.
That said, the rest of your pos
Paper manuals (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Paper manuals (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Paper manuals (Score:2)
Some people just like having their documentation on paper
*Raises hand* Somewhat OT, but one thing that has bugged me in my first forays into Linux OSes over the past few months is the utter lack of comprehensive and up-to-date documentation in any form, paper or electronic. And I do much prefer paper, wherever possible. I bought Running Linux, 4th Ed. and Linux in a Nutshell in paper form and both have come in handy, though neither are up-to-the-minute. I even bought FreeBSD Mall's FreeBSD 5.1 box t
tease value (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course some say print is dead. But if print is dead then so too is the novel. No one wants to read 300 plus pages on a screen. And more importantly, no one wants to re-read a novel on screen. Very little interaction with the object there. No sense of "consumption."
Re:tease value (Score:5, Interesting)
I've read several full-length novels this way now, and speaking only for myself, I absolutely prefer it, by a fairly wide margin. I have an entire library in my pocket all the time, the book mark never falls out, and I can read in the dark. Hurah for the Baen free library [baen.com]!
Re:tease value (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen thousands of times people saying that they don't read books on the computer. I honestly don't understand this. My eyes are equally uncomfortable after 8-hour marathon reading sessions and spending 8 hours staring at a screen. There is little to no difference to me as to whether I'll read something online or offline, rather than cost and the 'reading room' factor [don't really feel like carrying digital devices in there]. So effectively I end up reading almost every book I've read in the past th
eBooks, failure? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:eBooks, failure? (Score:5, Insightful)
"For quick reference they can't be beat!"
I think you've hit the nail on the head. If I have a hard copy of the LotR trilogy and an electronic copy, I'll get exactly the same story, same information. Heck, probably even the same font.
Aside from the information, their uses can be vastly divergent. Lets say that I'm writing a college term paper on the LotR. With the electronic copy, I can search through it with a few key strokes and be 100% accurate. Doing the same thing with a hard copy would require days/weeks of annotating with pen/paper as you read it. And having done such a thing, its much less enjoyable to read when you have to stop every few minutes to make notes rather than just let the story flow.
I don't think ebooks are failures, they just have different strengths compared to dead tree copies.
Shadow
Books are more than words (Score:3, Insightful)
E-book publishers fail to take into account the fact that for many readers books are an object of beauty in themselves - we love the smell, feel, and character of a well made book. As things stand I can only see one or two future uses for the medium outside niche markets such as computing textbooks.
1)Electronic versions of books included with the printed version in place of an index - with an html or similar interface for searching.
2)If some genius could come up with a device which stored ebooks on a drive, and which was capable of having an old book put in the top (to be pulped, recycled, then reprinted with the text of a new ebook and re-bound). Can't see this happening though!
Cheap? (Score:2)
Cheap!? $7.99 for the average paperback, an average of $40 for a hardcover. If you read a book a week it gets to be pretty expensive.
Re:Cheap? (Score:2, Insightful)
You're right about the prices for printed books being extortionate though.
Re:Cheap? (Score:2)
Sure, they're higher than they used to be, but isn't a good book worth $10?
I suppose there will always be someone whining about how anything's "too expensive," but jesus. If you're that cheap, there are always libraries.
Re:Books are more than words (Score:3, Insightful)
Reference vs Enjoyment (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not entirely sure why I prefer paper for enjoyment reading, but the reference material should be obvious (Ctrl+F).
I've tried reading eBooks for enjoyment, but while I can sit and read an 800 page book in one sitting I often find that I can't read an eBook for anywhere near as long.
One of the reasons, of course, being that unless I want a workout I can't lie on my back on my bed and read an eBook, my monitor is too heavy
Another being the distraction level on a computer is a lot higher, email coming, games at my fingertips, etc.
And then there is the brightness factor, maybe it is just psychological, but I find that trying to sit down and read an eBook after already staring at a screen for 14 hours not only makes my head hurt, but it doesn't de-stress me nearly as well because I am still sitting in front of the computer...
Ebooks a failure? What of Project Gutenberg? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just look at Project Gutenberg. I know I, and other college students, use it often to read books that are public domain yet sold at amazingly inflated prices at the college bookstore. With such a large selection of interesting topics it is easy to find most of the classics and select ones you want to read.
Perhaps e-books aren't the great moneymaker of the Internet, or it might be that no one has found the right business model. Either way they are from failures at promoting higher literacy and education among students.
Re:Ebooks a failure? What of Project Gutenberg? (Score:2)
The Creative Commons Licenses (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically this is the extension of the GPL into other domains, based much on the same premise: I license you my work to use if you agree to license your derived works on the same basis.
It's a wonderful thing, and I believe it's workable, even in commercialized fields like music and publishing. The number of artists who are unable to get their (good) work published is extraordinary. Using a CC license they can publish it, and while making no less money than if it was not published, create many more opportunities for fame and fortune.
The established media businesses are as much a barrier to sucess for new artists as they are a source of income to established ones. The CC licenses provide the basis for a change.
It remains to be see whether we will see a creative explosion in other fields as we have seen in software. Finally, Free Music, Free Art, and Free Words.
The real reason for Ebook (Score:5, Interesting)
Ebooks aren't dead. People just haven't caught on to the real reasons to read ebooks on your palm pilot other than a real book. Compactness, you can cram about a 100 ebooks on an average 128mb memory stick. This is the eqivilant of carrying a small library with you every where you go. An this is very important. Nothing is worse than being suck on the can with nothing to read.
This goes to my second reason with compactness. You can stick a palm pilot in you pocket when you head to the can at work. It looks less suspicous when you head to the head to take a shi than if you had a book under your arm. Boss won't notice as much.
Re:The real reason for Ebook (Score:2)
Re:The real reason for Ebook (Score:2)
There is one more reason that has to do with compactness of ebooks that I didn't mention. All those physical books take up space, lots of space. Now while I would love to have a bigass library of books I don't have the space for such a thing. I imagine many of my fellow geeks don't ether.
For example, last summer I cleaned out my book storage. I gave away 25 years of books that I had been hording. It come to about 3500 books that served no purpose in my closets but to take up space. I can fit that man
Re:The real reason for Ebook (Score:2)
And page turning can be done (easily) with the same hand that holds the book, leaving the other hand free. Free to hold a sandwich, perverts.
And contra Doctorow's speech, ebooks are easier to read in the bathtub or hottub. If you're really worried, put in a ziplock.
And with an ebook, as my eyes get tired, I can increase the font size. When I get tired of hitting the next page button too frequently, I c
Paper book ruling: random access and low cost (Score:3, Interesting)
ebook reader's are expensive. I remember a model that had a cover with "leather smell", to appeal to paper book readers, another marketing moron displaying it's stupidity: a reader reads a book because of the contents. judging a book for it's cover is for illiterates... or marketing morons.
reading on a gorgeous wide and tall screen of a palm sized device doesn't fit in my sense of confort.
an last but not least, random access... you can flip through the pages of a book as you wish, looking for random passages or particular points of the text. the close to a book flip that you can do with a ebook reader is the fast forward, backward, or select a given page... not that bad.
ebooks can be a huge success when cheap reader appear. something with a screen the size of a pocket book, with good contrast, backlight could be a plus, but not essential. also an ebook not tied to some proprietary DRMed format. I want to download some of the classicals available at the project Guthenberg or simmilars and read it. and a cheaper price tag. if the costs of distribution, stocking are being cutted, I want my share.
Re:Paper book ruling: random access and low cost (Score:2)
You can also read them on a laptop (or even a desktop), which most of you have, and that would also fall under the "free in a sense" category.
If you're looking for eBooks to use on non-dedicated devices such as computers and PDAs, check out Palm Digital Media [palmdigitalmedia.com].
Re:Paper book ruling: random access and low cost (Score:2, Interesting)
The e-book reading experiance.
We need readers of some sort - for techs PDA's make sense, but I hesitate to say that should be the answer for everyone. One of the best readers in my opinion was the RCA REB 1100 e-book. It was easy to use, it was comfortable and well designed overall. Too bad they decided on stupid DRM and couldn't market it right.
A disclaimer - I am not a bu
The big problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'd like to see a low-power (eight to sixteen hours on a single charge) tablet-PC-like device, one which is as easy on the eyes as a normal book (not that hard, really[1]), has a small-but-useful amount of storage (say, 8M of RAM and 512M of compactflash), and into which I can upload textbooks and course notes for all of my college courses. It has to be durable as well; I should be able to accidentally knock this thing off a table into an aquarium, and it should still work.
Give it some simple handwriting recognition, some decent calculation software, and the ability to link up with a desktop via a USB cable, and you could sell tons of these things to college students. I know I'd jump at the opportunity to not lug around a 40lb backpack, laptop case, two-inch binder filled with notes...oh, and a rew reference manuals...even if it cost me a few hundred bucks. Textbook publishers could also get in on the game; charge half as much for an E-book (which can't be resold), and use this as incentive to sell the tablet devices. Everyone wins -- the publishers make more money (no printing, shipping, or warehousing costs), the tablet maker wins, and the students win (less back strain, cheaper textbooks, ability to have an entire library in a satchel).
[1] If you're willing to keep it black-and-white, just use a farly high-resolution LCD, and use a plain white sheet of paper as a background; the paper will reflect ambient light properly, except where the LCD is active -- presto, paper-like black-on-white text, just like a book.
Re:The big problem... (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, 1999 called. It wants its information back.
Seriously. I've got a Zaurus. It weighs 7.1 ounces (comparable to a paperback), fits in my pocket (unlike a paperback), has 96KB of memory and a(n aftermarket) 512 MB SD card for the books. It's not a brick, but I've dropped it from four or five feet to wooden and carpeted floors too many times, and it's fine. It's true it's not as easy n the eyes as paper, but it's full (65,536) color and 320 x 240 with several anti-aliased fonts. It's not read only, in fact it has a thumb keyboard built in, and the ebook reader software (opie reader) allows annotations.
With the Wifi card plugged in, I can read ebooks on the net, on my PC (via samba mount) or copy them to the SD card. I'm currently reading Doctorow's latest, in fact.
Its battery life is a little low (4-6 hours), and it costs $400-$500. An alternative is a $100 Palm Pilot, with a longer battery life and a lower, black and white resolution; you can find after-market fonts for a Palm too. (I read books on a Handspring before I got the Zaurus).
Re:The big problem... (Score:2)
Furthermore, I've used a Zaurus[1], and while it's one of the most durable PDAs I've run across, I still
My major problem: electronic text reading speeds (Score:2)
But if you have to read a lot of text at once- for either work or personal use- paper still wins, because paper isn't just a little bit faster: reading speeds are significantly faster for paper [city.ac.uk].
Electronic text formats that try to make e-pages look just like paper pag
Re:My major problem: electronic text reading speed (Score:2)
Take a fucking bus if you want to read on the road, or have someone else drive.
the right niche for them (Score:5, Interesting)
My response. (Score:2, Interesting)
Because Firefox wraps, and you don't... (Score:2, Informative)
February 12, 2004 - San Diego, CA
Cory Doctorow doctorow@craphound.com
--
Forematter:
This talk was initially given at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology
Conference [ http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004 ], along
with a set of slides that, for copyright reasons (ironic!) can't
be released alongside of this file. However, you will find,
interspersed in this text, notations describing the places where
new slides should be
e-books are irrellevent (Score:3, Interesting)
I purchased in the traditional way.. I browsed it on the shelves of my local small bookstore. I then checked if it was available at my local used bookstore. When it wasn't there, I returned to the small bookstore & purchased it there. (The two stores are next door to each other.. very handy.)
As Cory acknowledges, noone is going to read a text of significant duration online. Until there is an e-book reader device that can better replicate the look/feel/portability/durability of paper and won't strain my eyes, then I'm sticking to paperbacks.
Re:e-books are irrellevent (Score:2)
I read "Down and Out..." on my laptop, start to finish, and I thought it was a great book.
Also, I have an HP Jornada PDA, with an eBook reader. I found a collection of something like 3,000 eBooks on Kazaa about a year and a half ago, and I've now probably read about 150 of them, on my PDA. The screen is bright and easy to read, and my PDA is always with me, so I always have a large selection of books to read. It's much easier to carry around a small, thin PDA than a 600 p
Re:e-books are irrellevent (Score:2)
Ebooks Neither E Nor Books? (Score:2, Funny)
The Holy Roman empire was neither holy, nor was it Roman. Discuss.
/Coffee Talk
Weaselmancer
Holy Roman Empire? (Score:2)
Nor was it an Empire.
Epigram by Voltaire [google.com].
-kgj
Just not there yet (Score:2)
ebooks is all I read anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
With 3 or 4 books in my Palm, I've got a book to read everywhere. I've read 10 times more books since using the Palm than when on paper.
Also we're way over capacity on paper books in our house; we just don't have room for what we have. We have about 300 linear feet of shelf space, much of it double-shelved, and another couple hundred pounds of books in boxes. I'm just not going to add to that by buying more paper.
Thank God for Baen books. I'd decided not to buy from Peanut Press anymore because I dislike having to remember credit card numbers from 5 years ago to unlock books, and I dislike paying as much for eBooks as for paper; I should at least get a few bucks off.
Baen publishes much of their catalog electronically, in open formats, at reasonable prices.
The DaOitMK Universe suddenly expands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cory Doctorow created a very interesting "universe" that other writers can play around in. A society where nobody really dies, where we've outgrown the need to work to earn our food and shelter, and where a person's reputation is more important than their net worth? Think about it: it's a very rich world to write stories in.
Yeah, most fanfic sucks. But sometimes people write fics that are as good as the movie or TV show they are riffing on. I can think of two people who wrote "Daria" fic who have a great future ahead of them as writers: CE Forman and Kara Wild. If there ever is a revival of the series (which won't happen and there are very good reasons why it shouldn't) they should be brought on board as official writers for the series.
Fanfic is often a way for a less-than-secure writer to exercise their writing muscles without the fuss, muss or bother of creating characters and environments for the characters to interact in. I know...I've written a little in my day, although I'm not proud enough to link to it so that you can see it.
Who knows what will happen once the DaOitMK universe starts expanding thanks to the work of fanfic writers? I suspect this endeavor might even spawn some writers who might not have gotten into writing otherwise.
Thank you, Cory Doctorow. You have given quite a generous gift...maybe more generous than you will ever know.
Look at iTunes and the iPod... (Score:3, Interesting)
Get all this crap in place and you will make a mint. Sell the books for 99 cents even. Heck I bet Apple is already working on this (They do audio books).
Re:Look at iTunes and the iPod... (Score:2)
-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
Re:Look at iTunes and the iPod... (Score:2)
Re:Look at iTunes and the iPod... (Score:2)
Isn't that self-contradictory?
Have an internal hard drive.
Oh god no.
One 64MB CompactFlash card will hold more texts than an average person can read in a month. Having a hard drive built into an electronic book might be interesting from a "gee-whiz" perspective, but it's simply impractical.
Of course, if you took a device that already had a hard drive, like an iPod, and enhanced the LCD
Re:Look at iTunes and the iPod... (Score:2)
Eye See the Problem... (Score:2, Interesting)
E-books are a wonderful tool for research an
Cory's on a signing tour! (Score:2, Funny)
Remember to bring your public key and a couple forms of ID!
TabletPC's make e-books workable (Score:2, Interesting)
artists and compensation and chump change (Score:5, Interesting)
Some impressions:
Although I'm happy that Mr. Doctorow has made a profit off his creative commons releases, I have a feeling that his case is an exception rather than the rule, and that once the the novelty value of creative commons content released by commercial publishers die down fewer people will be inclined to try first, buy later. (That is not worse than the status quo however). As pda's and ereaders become more user friendly, the temptation not to buy the hard copy will become irresistable for creative commons works.
I advocate a tip-based model of artistic compensation http://www.geocities.com/bigbadlinux/. Perhaps voluntary "pay-what-you-want" scenario is unrealistic, but compensation becomes viable when the pricepoint is low enough to seem insignificant.
A few years ago, memberships to porn sites cost 30-50$ a month; nowadays even most of them offer 1 day or 1 week memberships for gigabytes of movies. One could use emule to get these things, but when the price point starts resembling chump change, that's when people start voluntarily paying for online content.
If you look at this audio book site, for example http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/screen_main.asp?
downloading mp3 audios for entire novels cost only about $5. That's close to the level of chump change.
Right now POD books easily sell for $10-12, but 100% virtual content could probably go for $2-3. Content needs to be priced in a way that appears to be chump change for the buyer/reader but gains enough readership for chump change to add up to something substantial. Fortunately, the existence of weblogs like www.maudnewton.com and viral marketing make it easier to get your content out there.
The future is weblogs people.
PORN QUALITY==getting worse (Score:3, Interesting)
Therefore, when I say, wait until the price point becomes chump change, I am not implying that reduction in price implies a reduction in content standards. It may not even imply a reduction in compensation for creators. (It really is amazing how many things we can learn ab
content quality, chump change and porn... (Score:2)
Therefore, when I say, wait until the price point becomes chump change, I am not implying that reduction in price implies a reduction in content standards. It may not even imply a reduction in compensation for creators. (It really is amazing how many things we can learn ab
Creative Commons/GFDL helps (Score:2, Informative)
I wrote the O'Reilly book XForms Essentials [dubinko.info] and released it under the GFDL. I can say from experience that freeing the text has helped promote the book to audiences that would not have otherwise heard of it.
In order to deal with the rapidly changing technology, I launched a companion web site XForms Institute [xformsinstitute.com].
Particularly with technical books, "multimodal" publishing is smart. I'm glad to see Cory try it with fiction. -m
older books (Score:3, Interesting)
Searching is helpful. Having a book in one's pocket always is great. Some of the things I read are parts of enormous multi-volume sets that I wouldn't have room on a bookshelf for. For instance, dozens of volumes of Cardinal Newman or of the Jesuit Relations. Various classic books, too, are greatly improved by hyperlinking. For instance, Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae which has lots of back-references.
At one point my wife claimed to find it to be more fun to read in ebook format on a Clie NX60/70 (using Plucker) than to read the dead-tree editions. Autoscrolling was particularly nice when our baby was small and we had no hands free while doing things for the baby.
And, yes, it's nice to have a big library with one. I've got some 600mb of flash on my NX70. It's expensive, but when one considers the cost of printed books, it's not so bad. (For instance, I bet the complete works of Cardinal Newman would set me back a couple of hundred dollars in print format for the books themselves, and more when one considers the cost of another bookcase.) I just wish everybody published in ebook format. Then I wouldn't have to buy physical books almost at all.
The failure of E-books, Downloadable software,.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The failure of E-books, Downloadable software, and Online Music.
We all have seen the many publisher provided services for purchasing E-books, E-Music, and Software Downloads.
These services try to limit your options and choices or even to remove them from you totally. With many of these services you must agree that you do not even own that which you wish to purchase in order to buy it. Instead they license you right to use their private property.
We see the prices on the virtual which rival that of the physical. We instinctively know that the production cost of a E-book, Downloaded software, or MP3s is so much less than the cost of a compact disc or a printed book both of which require paper, ink, artwork, packaging and so much more that is totally lacking from the ethereal versions.
Their sales decline. "Stop the thieves" they cry out into the night! Make more and harsher laws to protect that which is already protected they demand of our governments. Protect our property and damn their rights is their idea of an ideal. I am a honest person is my vehement reply. So why attempt punish me for the crimes of others.
They attempt to smother new technology on the premise that it may possibly be used for illegal activity.
While it is not my intention to justify the theft of their material I must point out it's their own fault really. I blame their lack of foresight and their lack of anything resembling common sense. They do not exploit the markets available for them or if they do it's a halfhearted attempt. In the real world people are not buying what you sale one common step generally taken is to consider lowering your prices until your sales pick up. This also applies on the Internet.
In a concise conclusion I state that I personally prefer to compensate the authors and composers of the material that I so enjoy in my daily life. Currently I do so off-line. So Publishing and recording industries I say make it worth my while and convenient to do so and I will be one of the first in line online.
Making money by giving things away (Score:3, Informative)
I'm convinced that the gift economy can generate returns. Cory is right.
Zaurus as reader (Score:2, Interesting)
My Zaurus SL-C750 [shirtpocket.co.uk] has completely changed the way I read. I'm starting to get really annoyed by the physicality of real books now, in the same way that my jukebox MP3 player has made me get annoyed with CDs. There is an excellent reader program [uklinux.net] which reads all sorts of formats (including Plucker and AportisDoc), and the smooth text scrolling is supremely smooth because of the 640x480 display. And of course, I can use it in portrait or landscape mode (when the screen is rotated, the display auto-rotates).
I
Summary of objections (Score:4, Insightful)
- Ebook hardware is crap. The screen is to small, &c &c.
- EBook files are far too restricted -- I don't want to lose all my books when I upgrade to a new machine or reader.
- EBooks are far too expensive.
- You can't fold down the page corners on an ebook.
All these complaints are about some current implementations of ebooks, not inherent in the format. Yes, some reader hardware isn't good, some ebook files are overly-protected, and some reader apps are limited. But all this is changing, and will change more in future. There's nothing that says you have to have dedicated hardware; many different types of pocket computer are already good for reading ebooks, and I expect many more will become available. There's an awful lot of books available as plain text, both legally (free like Project Gutenberg, or paid like Fictionwise [fictionwise.com]), and otherwise (P2P &c), which is both platform- and future-proofed. And some reader apps already handle bookmarks, annotations, &c. Most of these objections may seem silly in a few years.- No-one would ever read an entire book on screen. Paper is much easier on the eye.
- There's nothing like being able to pick up a book and hold it.
- You can't give ebooks as presents.
These are mostly a matter of personal taste. Many people find that a good screen (whether desktop or palmtop) is easy enough on the eye that the other advantages of ebooks outweigh that objection. If you can pick up a book, then you have to have some space to put it into in the first place; some people have far more HD space available than bookshelf space. And people already give 'virtual' presents -- just think of book tokens, for example.In short, almost all the objections people are making are valid but limited -- to certain types of people, and/or current technology. I doubt ebooks will replace dead-tree books in the foreseeable future, but there's no reason why they may not provide a popular alternative.
Personally, I've read far more on the screen of my Psion than I have on paper for the last few years; my library is over 80MB of compressed text. I always have something to read, wherever I am, and I can edit things as I wish (e.g. converting to British English spelling [cix.co.uk]). The only place where paper is still better for me is on the loo; elsewhere, ebooks are more useful -- especially for reading in bed, where the backlight lets me read in the dark!
Re:This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. (Score:5, Insightful)
As the important part of the document is the content, there's no need for it to be in HTML. It is a speech, after all, and not a press release.
Re:This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. (Score:5, Funny)
Then I really got into the spirit of the thing:
I printed it and read it on paper.
KFG
Re:This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. (Score:2, Informative)
It's a text file, and I assume the server sent text/plain as its type. Worked fine in Firefox, I thought maybe the OP meant "IE" when they said a standard browser, so I checked in IE6. Looked fine there as well.
At about 12 words per line, it's even easy to read as well, so I have no idea what they're whining about
Re:This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. (Score:2)
Ebooks and papers, in particular are commonly formated as plain text for web distribution, allowing the reader to use whatever text editor they choose and to format the content in any way that pleases them.
As well as having formated the text for printing I have also now put a copy of the file on my laptop which I use as an ebook reader, which does not even have a browser installed,
Re:This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. (Score:4, Funny)
the article is free but the word wrapping is offered as a premium service.
This is totally offtopic...but (Score:3, Offtopic)
Slashdot is a lie. While its purpose is to advance the cause of OSS and Lunix, its users overwhelmingly use Microsoft products to surf the web. Recently I put forth a challenge to slashdot my site in my sig file. The idea of turning a server into a smoking pile of metal is irresistible to the average Slashdotter. The hits began pouring in. Now you'd think that my referral logs would show that the visitors coming from Slashdot would be using Mozilla under Lunix.
Re:This is totally offtopic...but (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's the platform summary for that day:
Windows: 65.17%
Macintosh: 16.10%
Linux: 15.99%
Here's the browser summary:
IE: 45.78%
Mozilla: 29.35%
Safari: 11.79%
Opera: 4.44%
The referals on that day were 92.92% Slashdot.
Re:This is totally offtopic...but (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know if you were intending otherwise since you didn't comment.
Re:This is totally offtopic...but (Score:2)
The customer site of mine that got slashdotted, that of Edward Tufte, does attract a different set of folks than what would be the norm.
Later that month he got mentioned in USA Today and news.yahoo.com and those visits were much higher in IE/Windows than the slashdotting.
Re:This is totally offtopic...but (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's the platform summary for that day:
1. Geeks are also more likely to lie in their HTTP User-Agent header, either to work around sites that petulantly detect the browser and refuse to function if they don't like it (like my bank, which works fine in Moz* but insists it doesn't), or to frustrate sites that attempt exploits based n the browser, or just for the hell of it.
2. I run Windows 2K. But I consider myself a
Re:This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. (Score:2)
Rewrapped courtesy of html and /. (Score:3, Informative)
Paper for the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference, 2004
February 12, 2004
San Diego, CA
Cory Doctorow
doctorow@craphound.com
--
Forematter:
This talk was initially given at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference [ http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004 ], along with a set of slides that, for copyright reasons (ironic!) can't be released alongside of this file. However, you will find, interspersed in this text, notations describing the places where new slides shou
Re:This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Get yer eBook here! (Score:3, Interesting)
My partner has written a book, which after failing to get it off the ground by selling it, we decided to make into an e-book and give away for free. It's a bit different to almost any other books, in that it's laid out from articles and clippings from assorted fictional magazines, books, and newspapers, with lots of pictures. Nice and easy to read on a computer screen, though.
More info, and download as a PDF, at http:/ [pigpog.com]
Re:Posting article for the sake of word wrap (Score:3, Funny)
Re:once again (Score:2)
Re:once again (Score:2)
That's my problem; I've read a number of the short stories he's made available and it's "in the spirit of Gibson and Stephenson" the way the Soviet space shuttle was "in the spirit" of the US design. (Sorry for the obscure reference, it was the first to come to mind.) The themes of his stories are pedestrian, even by sci-fi standards, and his writing style is all the style of Dick and Gibson with none of the substance.
Re:once again (Score:2)
As for your "believable day-after-tomorrow
Re:once again (Score:2)