Slashdot Mirror
King's New eBook
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.
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.
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If you want to read the King story on your Palm organizer or Windows CE device you can get it from PeanutPress.
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.
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
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
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?
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?
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
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.
/dev/null and they won't bother you ever again.
Just tell your mailer to put everything from barnesandnoble.com in
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Of course there will be, and people will use the same stupid arguments they use while they are downloading their illegal MP3s...
.25 per book, so I'm not hurting anyone
1) Man, the publishers make all the money, not the poor authors who only make
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!)
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
While it is nice that Stephen King releases his new book electronically, many classical works have been available at the Gutenberg project 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...
----------------------------------------------
the pun is mightier than the sword
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.
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, 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.)
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.
The cake is a pie
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.
The cake is a pie
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!
;)
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
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.
.sig: Now legally binding!
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..
.sig: Now legally binding!
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
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.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
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
Eruantalon
The Annals of Middle-earth
Amazon is giving away also the book. You have to download a reader that runs only on Microsoft OS. Veeeeery stupid.
Read it here.
Ironclad Security only exists when you have Chuck Norris on the shift. Do we really have to discuss this? (Plutonite)
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!
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-- "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 before you flame me.
P.S. If the link for SoftLock didn't work, try this one. 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.
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
"I build my canopy of steel.. it fulfills my sense of real.. a chrome protection" - Catherine Wheel
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.
But you can give them your email address and they will email it to you. (we will see )
k ing.asp?userid=4LN6ZHK7W8&srefer=
Here's the link
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bookshelf/ebooks/
AdFuel
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
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
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.
--
314-15-9265
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.
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...
Living Legacy of Consumption Culture
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
You can also get it for free at Chapters.ca
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.
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.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?