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Free Books Online
gaijin99 writes: "Kinda old, but Baen Books is letting any of their authors put up their books, for free, online. They are putting them up at the Baen Library No strings attached, downloadable in many formats. Apparently it got started when author Eric Flint said that online piracy didn't matter to book sales. Challenged to prove this, he got Baen to build the 'Free Online Library.' His position is that it will improve the sale of his books. Only six authors right now, but it looks good."
Anyone else think this might be useful?
Yes! All the people who wrote the books listed there!
Unfortunately, I think K-12 may be the hardest place to start making free-information inroads into textbooks. The politics you have to go through in most states to get a K-12 book approved is just horrendous.
The Assayer - free-information book reviews
Find free books.
In your dreams my brave little toaster! At best they can hope for is to generate willing buyers for their next novel, which of course will be delayed a bit before it gets on-line.
It isn't about where the ideas originated, but which countries became most associated with them. Fascism originated from Italy, not Germany, but if you switch to Italian in the middle of a list of totalitarian phrases, the point is totally lost.
I wasn't talking about a library. I was talking about a technology that could create paperback books from one digital copy of it. Using this machine, people could get physical books without any money going to the author. Eric Flint was talking about libraries and being places where people go to read books and talk about which ones were good, which helps sales. This new technology doesn't affect the library part, it affects the sales.
1. These totalitarian phrases remain totalitarian no matter which language they are in - English, Russian, or Italian. Their totalitarian point is not lost even if they are in Swahili. One just needs to speak Swahili to understand their meaning.
2. The Soviet Union, not Russia, is associated with communism. Russia has never been a communist country.
>> Second, if the Schools could get away with paying less for text books, they'd have more money for, yes you guessed it, more teachers or higher teacher salaries.
If schools save money on textbooks, they wont spend that money on teachers - they'll cut budgets or spend it elsewhere instead.
Schools permanently want more money; so do teachers. If the school gets more money, it would be foolish to assume the teachers will see any of it, let alone all of it.
~Cederic
> These totalitarian phrases remain totalitarian > no matter which language they are in
True, and in this case all the totalitarian phrases were in English. The German phrase was not totalitarian (is everything all right?), but was used to show what the author thought of the other phrases by association.
> The Soviet Union, not Russia, is associated
> with communism
But the language was Russian, which is why Russian-like phrases are effective in creating an association with totalitarian communism.
Rich
BugBear
Ignorance is curable. Stupid is forever.
- Generatingfunctionology, by Prof. Herbert Wilf. A must read for the theoretically-minded computer science nerd! It described all (well, most) the ins and outs of using generating functions (formal power series) to enumerate various combinatorial objects.
- A = B, by Petkovsek, Wilf and Zeilberger. This book completely kills the problem of simplifying nasty summations involving (for example) binomial coefficients, which often arise in combinatorial analysis.
- Algebraic Topology, by Allen Hatcher. A beautiful, though technical, subject. It has no immediate interest for compsci nerds (though it does have an important application to the theory of distributed computability), but I include it as an example of other quality math books available online.
The tide is turning...True. Many of my friends collect hard covers, and the key word is collect. They buy the big fancy book partly just to have it sit on the shelf and look pretty.
I on the other hand already have over a thousand books and don't need them to be bigger. I prefer small and portable over large and clunky.
I do dislike how they sell the books, with the hardcovers being the ones the author makes money off of. I'd much rather buy the paperback that I find convenient and tip the author an extra buck or two.
Many authors are offended if people wait for the paperbacks, but excuse me, it's not worth the extra $20 for a bigger, less useful book, just to make a little more money for them.
Publishers, as they stand today, sure.
But Baen's webscription is run by the publisher. They supply the editors, match the authors with the cover artists, help market things, and take care of the financial side. That'll always be useful. The only difference is that they won't be absolutely required so they'll have to compete for the market.
And even the paper pushers won't go out of business. It's just that instead of paying the paper tax to be able to read, I'll buy the book online and buy a poster to go on the walls. They'll adapt and survive. Some at any rate.
It'll be quite a while before paper isn't the best for some things. (Even books, in many settings.)
I could be facetious and say 'none', since my speakers stay off these days, but I do have a few mp3s, and they're mostly live/rare/unreleased, so no 'real' copies. I've bought cds for which I'd downloaded songs; mainly stuff I was going to get anyway and wiped for disk space once I had the albums.
As for how the try-all-then-buy would work in my case, the answer is "very badly". Before I buy something readily available in full, for free, I'd have to be getting added value for money in terms of useability/nicer format/reward a deserving creator.
Frex, I doubt I'll buy a Doonesbury collection while they keep the entire archive online (and the library has the cd version) no matter how much I enjoy Duke strips, and the only thing Baen's samples have ever done is convince me not to get X's latest, though I like how they post 3 chapters, not just one. Otoh, I ordered Harbaugh's character dictionary based on the quality of his site, but it took me 2 years, and was because I wanted to read entries at leisure and Mozilla was buggy on the frames.
I appreciate people putting their whole works online, but I think that from a sales point, going beyond moderate samples (say, short stories/essays in full, shopping link for novels/collections) is detrimental. Few authors/artists are good enough to sustain my interest when it comes to turning freebies into own-copies, and given the choice between buying hardcopy of someone's useful textbook and spending that money on Feynman books, Tuva or Bust wins. I also think that most people are paying out of guilt or on principle.
That said, given the choice between a more costly physical copy (of reasonable quality and price) and a cheap/er online copy from a favourite (and worthy) author (Pratchett or Hambly, say), I'll take the tactile (not to mention archival) version. And I'd be really happy if I could buy print-on-demand facsimiles of oop/obscure works.
Money can be exchanged for peanuts. :)
I actually don't want liner notes, or cover art. I still want to support the artist, but CDs are such a pain. I immediately rip (to mp3) any that I do get and toss them into a box where I leave them.
So I don't buy CDs, or rather, I do, but want to stop. That's why the idea of tipping the artist directly is so great. I can pay 1/4 of what I would have for the CD and the artist gets 4 times as much (easily). So if I spend the same ammount I can get four times as much music, and the RIAA doesn't get a dime.
Why waste the money buying a paper book that you don't want?
Go to fairtunes.org and tip the author. If you want to tip the full cover price, I'm sure they'd love it, but if you want to tip maybe a 1/4 or so (because all you're paying for is the words) then that's fine too.
If the author isn't listed, then tell some friends because I think they only tip once the ammount is over $50 or so.
That's a much better way than buy paper you don't want, supporting a system that you don't need.
let me guess - you're under 25?
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
i lean more toward latex, but i would be happy to help! email me if you need it. we could goto sourceforge and startup a project... if you havent already: )
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
thank you
FYI, there was an interesting article in the SFGate about the advent of online comics, and the bad state of the comic industry:
e %3 D/technology/archive/2000/02/08/ape.dtl%26type%3Dt ech_column
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi%3Ffil
w o r l d w i d e w e b e r
Someone--no, not just someone--the head of a well-known publishing company and its authors--is clued?
what a concept. This may revolutionize my book-buying tendencies. I wonder if BookPeople has a Baen publishing section (wise-ass reply, "look in sci-fi/fantasy")
I'm impressed beyond words. This is great. After the gloom and doom of the MPAA and RIAA repeating their tired arguments from the betamax time-shifting trials 20 years later, it's wonderful to see that some people who are at the head of their corporations 'get it'.
Now, if only they had a better webmaster...
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Bruce Eckel does this with his "Thinking In Java" book, and possibly some of his other coding books too. Jason
i know, My point was that reading the first book in a serie for free would lead to buy the next books weither from webscription or in a bookstore. sort of the the thing drug dealers do. The first one is free, hehehehehe and then when you are hooked , THEN when you just have to have more you will have to pay. We at the Baen's Bar know this but we are already hooked, it might be to late for us but other's are still able to escape. Bowman
King is a money grubbing asshole.
Baen is willing to show the consumer is books, and let them choose to pay if they think it's worth while.
King wanted people to pay by the chapter, and not see the goods until after they paid. H's also a jerk, he wanted to charge paper prices for something that cost him less, so he'd make like ten times as much as before, without giving anything back to the customer. And then he cancelled the project, screwing the people who had paid.
We'd laugh at someone selling MP3s for CD prices, why is it reasonable that King wanted to change paper prices for an ebook? Especially since King has his head up his anus and wants people to pay twice for another copy of the bits, despite just wanting to read it in a new place. That may be correct under a strict interpretation of copyright law, but it makes no sense if you understand how the electronic media works.
But, to answer the other part of the question, yes, I am supporting Baen. (Webscriptions, not in paper.)
pokemon rulz, foolz!!!
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
Also, _On Basilisk Station_ is David Weber's highest volume book. As well as BAEN's. It has been made available for free since August of 1999, and is still one of the most sold books.
My point was that the author would not get any money. He distributes the book in electronic form for free (to get them hooked, as per your comment), then the user pays some other company to get it made into a paperback. The author who actually did the work gets nothing.
but he does get money from the next books that the person buys.
In the new c't William Gibson was interviewed. The article is not online, but i'm citing (and translating) the interesting parts:
[about the copyright in the web]
It's complicated but no serious threat for me. If i would be a pop musician i would have to think how to stick with the new reality. You see, the great thing about a printed book is, taht it is much easier to move and use than everything you can produce from a download. If i would put the whole text into the web, somebody could download it and print it out. But such a printout would be rather primitive. Somebody elso could download the text, and use much effort to create it with typography as a book as we have it here now. Thats not too complicated. But he would need the paper, the ink and just too much time. That would make no sense, if he could buy the ready book for a few bucks in the bookstore. So, why should i be afraid?
[about opposite thought from others]
Since the 16th century text is best delivered in a book. The easiest way to get something readable is to buy a book produced from wood and ink in a bookstore. To copy the text from a book is very easy, but if you clone a whole book, you have stolen a whole book, a media. Thats something pretty different and it's unlawfull since the 19th century. If someone just wants to read the text, he could have it for free. Thats fine with me, i don't care.
[about his texts in the web]
If i would learn, that an unauthorized chinese translation would be sold as printed books in china i would immediate try to stop that. But if the same translation would be available in the web, i won't do anything. I would think: Hey, thats cool, what a fine thing.
I know that I went and snagged copies of the
Baen books bundles that had Flint books in them
as soon as I heard about this....
In my opinion you should read Tolkien after you have read a number of other fantasy works so that you can appreciate the master at the time you read it. I read it after reading quite a large number of other fantasy books and found the difference between Tolkien and other authors to be extremely fascinating.
Of course, there are those that are stupid enough to think that since they read Tolkien after reading some author that obviously ripped him off that Tokien is a copy cat. To those people I say:
1. Engage brain.
2. Check original publishing dates.
3. Feel ashamed.
But, my point was that it is tough to truly appreciate Tolkien if you don't read some other fantasy work first, and it is really tough to appreciate other fantasy work if you don't read it before Tolkien.
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Most real musicians have gone underground.
If you see a commercial for an album on TV before it comes out, especially during prime time, that is not a band of musicians.
I especially love the bands that try to portray themselves as the poor repressed youth that aren't understood by anyone, yet are obviously paid for all the way by corporate rock. (Godsmack and A Perfect Circle come to mind.)
Oh, I'm sorry, what was the subject again?
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1. No, Russian-like phrases are not any more effective in creating an association with totalitarian communism than phrases in any other language. It is not the language but the meaning that makes a phrase sound totalitarian.
Anyway, to follow your arguments, English should be the best candidate for creating an association with oppression and colonialism. Why? Because Great Britain was once the mightiest colonial power which encouraged slave trade and ruthlessly suppressed any uprising against its rule.
2.You placed the adjective "totalitarian" before the word "communism". Do you honestly believe that there are other flavors of communism which are not totalitarian?
I think it's a great idea. If you go there to read the book, and you like it, chances are you'll wanna go out and buy the actual book so you're not tied to the computer when reading it. If I saw a book online, I'm not gonna sit there and read the whole thing... I'll read maybe a chapter or two, then I'll go buy it if it's any good.
--
Join
He can download the next book for free and pay some other company to print it up. He never has to pay the author anything because the books are available in electronic format.
I'm a native German speaker, so you don't have to translate it for me. But what is it supposed to mean in the context of
Enforcement! Regulation! New regulations! Tighter regulations! All out for the campaign against piracy! No quarter! Build more prisons! Harsher sentences!
Germany = Nazi-Germany?
Or is it a quote?
BTW has anyone out there read 'lord of the rings' ? It totally rules, and 'the hobbit'.
Gee I hope I don't come over as a stereotype linux geek :-). OOops I'm listening to the 'dead.
Got to go, time to go and wash my beard. (I do this every month whether it needs it or not)...
But the simple fact is popular, established artists, like Metallica and Stephen King, don't need to generate word of mouth,
Sorry, but I disagree with this whole-heartedly. Just because a writer or musician is popular (ie, lots of people are familiar with their name), doesn't mean they don't need word of mouth. I have very little interest in King or Metallica, even though I am very familiar with them. If I was ever going to buy a Stephen King book right now, I would need a friend telling me how good it was. Same goes for Metallica and lots of other artists: I'd never buy one of their CDs unless it was recommended to me via word of mouth.
Yes, this is only a personal example, but I'm certain many people act the same way I do when it comes to buying CDs, books...even from "Popular" artists.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
I'm sure if I read a online book or try out a software i appreciate ( but not necessarily use) I would be happy to make a small payment.
not all of us live in the usa and the minimum funds transfer charges are rather high.
many great sharewares are pirated for this reason. i hope gnu comes out with a sound micropayment system that can be deployed on these free books and other sites. why , even free s/w authors could be sent some cash to encourage them.
He said as he was caught using Napster to download the latest Metallica single
Rich
I can only say for computer reading (not PDA books) that it is very difficult to sit there for hours on end and read the text on the screen. The text starts to blur (and from the little that I read on this site) I found it very difficult to read (there wasn't really any space between the lines and it just made it all jumble together).
It is a wonderful idea, and I appauled the creator, but for now I will stick to Amazon and the library.
I agree with most others that reading books online isn't as convenient as paper versions at the moment, but it will one day be. There is even the possibility of a book with paper (or very much paper like) pages that can change it's text. That may seem a bit far out now, but in 20 years it could very well be a reality.
And I am willing to pay the same amount for the online book as I would pay for the physical version. Of course with such great advances as we have even now, I get to read the book first and decide how much I would like to pay for it.
So I ask again, where is the link to pay for these books?
Can anyone tell me how to read these books on a palm. I have the .prc file, but I don't have anything to view it with.
More info here.
After a while you even forget that you are not reading on paper and best of all, whith the beautiful screen of the iPaq or the Cassiopea, you can read in the dark. And on top of that you could even play some background MP3.
Try to do that with your Palm!!!
Egad, you've never heard of any of them? I'm surprised. They're all solid, I guess what you'd call midlist authors. Baen Publishing is one of the biggest privately held publishing companies in the country, specializing in science fiction and fantasy, owned and operated by Jim Baen. Checkout the sci-fi section of your local bookstore, a goodly percentage of the books will have Baen's little rocket logo on the spine.
// TODO: fix sig
Even if this just serves to give lesser known authors exposure, the publishers won't be able to tell unless there is some kind of impact on their sales (hopefully positive). So if you like it, buy it and we can see more free books online.
(Also, there are people like me who reread books several times over and will buy books they really like...)
--
--
brave little toaster
"Remember, don't try this at home until the statute of limitations has expired."
Another thing to do if you support this experiment with free (-as-in-beer) information is to write a review of one of these books on The Assayer, which is a nonprofit site I run for user-submitted book reviews with an emphasis on free books. All reviews are copyleft licensed, and the site is noncommercial.
All ten of the Baen books are now listed (so far without reviews) in the site's literature section.
One of the main arguments people have made against free books is that without a publisher, you have no filter in place to get rid of the junk. The Assayer aims to disprove that argument by providing a forum for people to discuss which free books are good and which are bad.
</self-promotion>
By supporting Baen in this experiment, you'll also be helping encourage publishers to take the next step, which is to publish books that are free-as-in-speech, or at least partially free-as-in-speech, e.g. using OPL with the A&B options that prevent other print publishers from selling the same book in print. Until they take that step, there's always the possibility that publishers will make free-as-in-beer books not free again. This has happened with about 30 Macmillan computer science titles. You'll find them all listed on IPL as if they were free, but when you click on the link, you get a message saying they're no longer available for free.
You also have to realize that the publishing industry really doesn't know how this is going to play out. They'll try stuff and see if it works. They'll try antibooks. They'll try lame stuff like putting books online, but only with every single page as a bitmap, so that it's completely impractical to read them. (iUniverse, Dorling Kindersley, and Electric Press do this.)
The Assayer - free-information book reviews
Find free books.
Eric Flint's welcome page essay on the welcome page of the Baen Free Library is an excellent read. I have not read as well thought out an argument about the whole online "stealing" vs. "free-promotion" thing since it started. If only Metallica had read this article before allowing their managers to scare them into suing Napster at the behest of their arm-twisting label. Sigh. It does give some hope for the future...
------- "One of the joys of travel is visiting new towns and meeting new people." -- G. KHAN
...told his publisher it wouldn't make any difference to sales if the paperback and hardcover were published simultaneously, because they were bought by two disjoint sets of readers.
Though skeptical, they tried it, and surprise! it was so.
Unfortunately, I forget who the publisher was, though I suspect Doubleday. He wrote about it in one of his many essays.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
As I stated in an earlier reply to another /.er,
Publishing online some older works, to generate interest in newer ones, would be a good idea even for the most popular authors.
Reading on-line isn't a problem, it's a blessing. For us 4-eyed types at least. You download, format, and make the font BIG to avoid eye-strain. Try finding a large-type version of some of these books. I now have Robinson Crusoe, and read it for the first time in years, because for the first time in years, I could. Had to set Word to 16 font to do it, even with glasses. It was great! I spend 8 hrs a day staring at a screen with little bitty words on it, which is how I ended up in glasses in the first place, so doing it at home is no big change. I have a comfortable chair, a drink holder, and auto-scroll. My wife said that I didn't move for 3 hrs, except to breathe.
Apparently the person didnt mind paper enough to not buy book 4. Sorry but there still isnt any replacement in the electronic world for a book. Not even close.
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
Ok, you don't like current industry supported rock, natch. However, this says nothing about whether these people are real musicians or not. Another obvious example would be that I have seen few underground orchestras, and members of orchestras and are about as real as musicians get.
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It would be very foolish for the music industry to assume that people downloading music for free will always automatically want to buy it if it turns out to be good.
You are falling into the trap that assumes "most people are thieves." Eric Flint address this directly in the Introduction. He says, "most people would rather be honest than dishonest...One of the things about the online debate over e-piracy that particularly galled me was the blithe assumption by some of my opponents that the human race is a pack of slavering would-be thieves held (barely) in check by the fear of prison sentences. Oh, hogwash."
I think the same arguement can be made for music listeners. I know that I have the desire to purchase CDs (getting the cover artwork, liner notes, etc) and I think most people feel the same way. After all, the percentage of slashdot trolls in the world is rather small.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
On the other hand, orchestras rarely have the big-time corporate support that pop-rock bands get.
And assuming that a member of an orchestra is as real as musicians get is kind of going overboard on generalizations. I've been in a few orchestras, and let me tell you, some of those people are nothing more than elitist scum. They know all the chords, they know all the notes, they play technically brilliant and know it. But they have absolutely no heart whatsoever. They don't pour their soul into their music. And to me, that is what makes a real musician.
Of course, this is a touchy subject to me so I'll leave it at that.
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Been there, done that, got the CD (Me First and the Gimme Gimmes "Have a Ball"). However, let's assume that absolutely no one would be willing to pay for a commercially available work that they could easily get for free online. So suddenly Weber has thousands of people downloading and reading "On Basilisk Station", but not paying him any money. But there's a catch.
There are something like 9 or 10 Honor Harrington novels that Weber's written. Only the first one is available for download. This means that those people who enjoyed "On Basilisk Station" and want more will wander to their local bookstore or amazon.com and start forking over cash. People who, if not for the freely available copy of "On Basilisk Station", might never have located his books in the first place.
It's a win-win situation. Customers get a free book with no obligation. Authors get a means to expand their audience and (hopefully) sell more of their other books.
I regularly read long novels on my PDA, and serialized amateur fiction on-line. It's quite easy to download and convert HTML or text files to DOC format and load them into a PDA reader; freeware conversion software for Windows and Linux can be found on Palm Gear HQ. (For Linux, look for dtk).
I like reading on a PDA; for some reason, it's easier on my eyes than staring at a CRT for hours, and it's half the size of paperback and goes everywhere. (Solves the problem of not being able to take your computer into the bathroom to read from). IMHO, PDAs have made e-books a reality.
I discovered the Baen Free Library and their Web Subscription service (they offer a nice selection of their non-free books as downloadable e-books if you buy a subscription.. go there and check it out for the details) just before Christmas. It was really nice reading On Basilisk Station (one of their FREE offerings) again--my paperback copy was ragged and missing somewhere in the den.
---dragoness
So most of what I'm seeing here is complaints about screen radiation and how monitors don't fit well in bed. Granted they don't, and the ideal ebook reader doesn't really exist although some companies are trying. You can read ebooks on your Palm, PocketPC, Newton (for those of us who still use them), or "insert name of device here." Sure, a real book is nice. It sits nicely on the shelf and you can impress your friends with it. But with an ebook I could carry my entire library on a small book-sized reader. For me this would be just about perfect for all of the references that I use in my day to day job. Even better if I could scribble notes and diagrams in the "margins" just like I do with my real books. It's a new paradigm folks, give it a chance. And no one here seems to grasp what ebooks really mean. What they really mean is that anyone who has a decent story to tell, whether it's fiction or fact, can do so with an ebook. They can make it available to the public when print publishers wouldn't even give it a second look. Does this mean they're writting crap? I know a lot of you will think so, but answer this first: Is open source software crap because it's not published and distributed like commercial software? Ebooks give everyone a chance to be heard. Take a look at Free e-Press. They're trying to set up a place where authors can show their works. You get to down load the whole story and read it before you decide to pay for it, and you can pay what you think it's worth. They utilize Pay Pal and the payments go stright to the authors. Sure most everyone with books available there are no-name authors, but if you think the major publishing companies publish everything worth reading you're insane. They're business folks, motivated by what they think they can sell a lot of. I have to admit, I have an interest in Free e-Press. I have one short story there and when I finnish the novel I'm working on I'll make it available there as well. The medium is not perfect yet (and like most things might never be perfect for everyone), but it gives authors a chance to be read. Give it a chance, maybe you'll discover other works of art that can tickle your imaginations and color your dreams. Maybe your O'Reilly library will accompany you on your palm when you're making $100/hr as a consultant. =) It could happen!
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
I would say that you are not a science-fiction reader, then. Both David Drake and David Weber are well-known, prolific modern Sci-Fi authors. Eric Flint seems to be an up & coming new sci-fi author. I have seen the works of every one of the authors in the Baen Free Library and the Baen Webscriptions service as offerings from the Science Fiction Book Club over the last two years or so, so I don't think they are exactly obscure.
Also, note that the Baen Free Library does not offer ALL the works by a given author, just a few that a given author is willing to give a way for free online. David Drake has many dozens of novels to his name, and David Weber has over a dozen.
---dragoness
I did read the story, and I did think, so don't be such an insulting prick. Drake and Weber may be good, but they won't be posting anything new. And I wasn't clear, but I realize some people buy cds after downloading mp3s. But I don't really see a lot of people going out and buying a copy of book that they downloaded and printed.
Some screenshots from eBook:
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3.
Teachers would probably love this. My Mom was once chosen to help pick which book a school system used. She had to read 5 or 6 books and then everybody got together and discussed what they liked and didn't like about each book and which one would fit into the lesson plans, etc. It was not a fun ordeal for her. However, I bet that every single teacher would love to spend that textbook adoption time going over the available material, making necessary changes, and then placing an order with the publisher for the number of copies wanted.
State regulations would get in the way at first, but if this project gets good, teachers would be guaranteed to like it and put pressure on the state legislature to put the proper changes in effect so adoption boards can approve of this. And a few "for the children" advertising campaigns would help, although it would be very ironic that a "for the children" campaign would actually be "for the children". Oh, and don't forget about the almighty dollar. The state legislatures are going to jump at anything that gives them higher quality at lower prices and everyone knows how much they hate spending on schools. I had the opportunity to have two teachers for parents, and believe me they complain about lack of resources, crappy books, etc. A lot. Make this project good and the teachers will support it. Teachers are very influential. And don't mess with them, they're Union.
One last thing. If it is going to work, you have to get teachers involved. Teachers can figure out a lot, but you should probably make the project as technophobe-friendly as possible.
It's do different than Id releasing the first level of Doom for free, introduce people to your product. Baen has already been releasing the first 50 to 100 pages of their books on the net for a long time. This just takes it a bit further.
but do you think many of the people that downloaded it purchased it? Or that "word of mouth" from those people persuaded others to buy it?
hadn't thought of that, I admit. Publishing online some older works, to generate interest in newer ones, would be a good idea even for the most popular authors.
Sure, the vast majority of people who download the book don't buy. Actually, I suspect most who download it don't read it :-) But who cares? It's still free advertising.
The Assayer - free-information book reviews
Find free books.
A story I read a while ago that talked about a new machine that could create paperback books in about fifteen minutes. Book stores could simply carry a digital copy of the book and print out unlimited numbers of paperback books instead of having to buy a bunch of copies that may or may not sell.
/. a while back (can't recall the date or poster, sorry. If anybody knows, please speak up so he gets some credit):
...I also believe that the social impact will be that casual copying will be seen as perfectly okay, and that the desire to not share copies will
be seen as childish. After all, if anyone anywhere -- including artisans -- can copy anything at any time for nothing, then what, fundamentally, will be wrong with copying anything?
...Okay, so we don't live on the Enterprise (yet), and we all still have to pay the rent. However, I strongly believe the concept of reputation will be central to a re-design of economics and the concept of intellectual "property" in the digital universe. Reputation will become a chief scarce resource in the digital universe, because it is an
artist's reputation that will guide you to their other scarce resource: their time. And it is their time that you will be paying for (no more
doing stuff "on spec")...
I wonder how authors would feel if there suddenly appeared companies who would create paperback books for you if you give them the digital copy of the book. We could then get the book from the web for free, then pay only the company that actually puts the words on paper (similar to the way it is now with music and CDs, ie. download the music and burn your own CD).
Would this new technology invalidate Eric Flint's argument? I mean, word of mouth would still spread about good books, but people could just get the ebook for free and pay someone else to put it in paperback form. The author would really only get paid by bookstores who want to carry his book and have to pay licensing or something for the ebook so they could make and sell their paperback copies.
This reminds me of another post I read on
So, in a universe where copying everything is seen as perfectly okay, is there anything an artisan should still have control over? I contend that the most crucial aspect of creativity still needing strict controls is the artisan's reputation.
Consider: On a visit to the Enterprise, you see an object you quite like. Naturally, you ask, "Wow! Who made that?" Both you and the object's creator would like to be certain you receive an accurate answer. Note that the question of whether the object you saw was an original or a copy is irrelevant. You no longer care if an object is "genuine;" you want to know who did it. In other words, you want to know about their reputation. (After all, maybe they did other cool stuff, too.)
Perhaps this is already becoming the issue (and before the advent of replicators!). Would it be better to have the ubiqitous fame of someone like DaVinci or have lots of money like anyone of the faceless shmucks in your typical successful rock band?
David Drake and David Weber are already popular, published, GOOD authors. I don't mention the other guys because I haven't read anything by them. So your point that only unknown authors will be on here is automatically mooted.
But realistically, no one can say with a straight face that someone who downloaded a copy of a commercially available work would be likely to go out and purchase a copy.
I've done this. A lot. Portishead, Curve, Placebo, Einsturzende Neubauten, Paris Combo, etc...
Would you please read the story next time, and think before you post.
great idea. let's make the teachers do even more work. it's not enough that they have to handle 30 to 40 inattentive, disobedient, ritalin-addled children for six hours a day for less money than they could make working at mcdonalds. let's force them all to buy computers with their tiny income, and do more work when they get home.
are you in human resources?
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Only two downsides to the Rocket device are the slow bootup time (close to 10 seconds) and the extra weight. It's just a little too heavy to hold for a long time.
I've already complained to Amazon that they only support the Microsoft reader, of course. There's even a bit in their FAQ where they say they don't support handhelds yet. Oh, joy.
Duane
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Napster has been responsible for most of my recent CD purchases. Tired of getting burned by CDs with two good songs and 10 terrible ones, I'd drifted away from modern music, but then Napster came along, and I got to preview all the music for a download. I ended up buying CDs of groups I never would have listened to otherwise, or had only heard one or two songs by them on the radio.
I'd chalked up the whole "Harry Potter" thing to the "Latest cool thingine" style craze that brought us Pokemon. Then I stumbled across the first three books in text form on Usenet. Yes, I read the first three for free, but I got addicted to books I NEVER would have read otherwise. I bought the fourth book, will be buying the rest of the series as it comes out (Unless it starts to suck) and will probably take my little sister to see the movie when it comes out.
Bottom line is, having books and music available online has caused me to buy MORE instead of less.
Heck, I even ended up buying the hard copy of an O'Reily book I already had in the Perl CD Bookshelf because I wanted a hard copy to mark up, dog ear and bookmark instead of having to fire up my browser every time I wanted to look up a code snippet.
And now I've read the first chapter to Black on Black and look forward to perusing it on my Palm during my next flight.
www.matthewmiller.net
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Or at HOME, with your PARENTS computer paper, on THEIR printer
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
.....Bruce Eckel at http://www.bruceeckel.com . All his books are free on the net. I downloaded "Thinking in Java 2" and started printing it out at work a chapter at a time, 2-up, double-sided on A4 and storing it in a ring-binder. After about 3 chapters, I was sick of the inconvenience, so went out and brought the book (a very worthwhile investment, I might add).
I suspect a LOT of people have done the same thing, and Bruce seems to be doing OK as a result. He makes some very good comments about it halfway down the page at http://www.bruceeckel.com/notes.html , worth reading.
I really don't see e-books taking off until we get those high resolution, paperback-sized flexible e-paper things. The reason books have lasted so long in their present form factor is convenience, which e-books currently don't have.
Since when have musicians stopped making music??? Look! There's Brittney Spears, and Eminem and... Oh. I see your point.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I wrote a PostgreSQL book at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/awbook.html. The book is online, but I sold 2,155 print copies in the first month. Clearly having it online has helped book sales.
As I look up on my bookshelf, amongst no less than 30 O'Reilly books (geek bragging :) I have Using Samba. If you take a look at that link you will notice that there are two links off of it, one in HTML and the other in PDF format. This should not be a surprise to most /.ers. O'Reilly has been big on this for some time.
Still, I began reading Using Samba online, and after reading much of it I grabbed the book because it was so useful, sure, I can load it into my palm pilot, but that is a pain in the ass. I suppose I could print it out too, but I prefer dead-tree form.
The other advantage to this is of course that when I am working on a server I don't have the book with me on location, so I fire up a browser and read.
I also purchased The Unix CD Bookshelf. I already have Unix Power Tools in dead-tree format, but being able to search the HTML version is very handy. Sure, I know where to get the warez version of this CD, and maybe the purchased edition comes with Unix in a Nutshell as a bonus, but I bought the set because it was valuable to me, and I support O'Reilly. Does having books online increase readership? I certanly think so, my friend who has both of the O'Reilly CD compilations that he got from Warez Ftp has not read them, well, he claims he read Building Internet firewalls, and TCP/IP Network Administration. But then again, he also claims that he read Running Linux in one day and grokked it all (yet he can't seem to use a bash prompt very well...)The truth is, he hardly got anything out of the online versions, I do, but I mainly use the online material for reference, not for general reading.
There is no doubt in my mind that O'Reillys decision to place some of their books on the web for download (or in plain HTML on CD) has greatly increased my purchase of their books.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
This was probably a stronger argument back before textbook prices went totally crazy. Nowadays, the prices are so ridiculous that it really would be cheaper in many cases to photocopy one copy per student. To use a college-level example, the latest edition of Halliday and Resnick's Fundamentals of physics is $180. No, that's not a typo. That's roughly 20 cents a page! (For comparison, it costs the publisher about $5 per copy for paper printing and binding on a black and white book with line art, assuming it's a long print run.)
I was also surprised when a couple of high-school teachers ordered stacks of the CD-ROM version of my own (college-level) free physics textbook for their AP physics classes. Personally I wouldn't want to be a student and have to work from a CD-ROM for a whole course, but maybe for these schools the financial situation was either CDs or nothing.
The Assayer - free-information book reviews
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How horrible your life must have been without "libraries" or "record stores" in your town, so that you had to turn to the web before you could read a book before purchasing it or sample a CD before buying it.
You're ignoring the fact that libraries and record stores are only filled with the products put out by the same companies which are fighting mp3s/ebooks. He had to turn to the web because he was sick of all the substandard material being produced by the major record companies and publishing houses.
In addition I have been reading alot of literature lately, which for either popularity or political reasons isn't readily available in the states. I have to read it online or go to certain lengths to get it. Other examples might be people who are not near a library or one of the record stores which allow you to listen to music before you buy it. Some of us have to walk in the snow or ride a bus if we want to go somewhere. We're not all priveledged enough to have a car, or tastes and interests that are convieniently in the majority, like you apparently are.
-The Wicked One
They died?
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"You just stranded one of the world's greatest leaders in San Dimas!"
Bob Fucking Costas. Does anyone else hate that motherfucker?
..Apparently, it also has a calculator.
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"You just stranded one of the world's greatest leaders in San Dimas!"
Bob Fucking Costas. Does anyone else hate that motherfucker?
Did I say anything about making teachers do it? I was inferring to some sort of online collaborative project where teachers of the same subjects could each write parts and such. I'm truly sorry if I did not make myself clear. Therefore, it would be something strictly optional. It would also mean that the most committed teachers would be doing it since they would be doing it on their own free time.
And like I said, each teacher would only have to write a small section since there are so many eligeble teachers out there to do something like this. Of course, a standard form of writing, outline, etc. and such would have to be agreed upon to tie the book together.
Another option is for the government to pay the teachers to create a book. It seems like it'd pay for itself in the long run, but that's just my perspective.
PS: Teachers get paid more than you think. It's just the "thing" to complain about how little teachers get paid. They chose to go into that profession knowing what kind of pay they would get. In addition, if a teacher wanted to contribute to such a project, they could always use a computer at school.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record and a shameless self-promoter, it would be more useful if people would review free books on The Assayer.
The Assayer - free-information book reviews
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These books are free as in "free beer" but not free as in unfettered. The GNU Free Documentation License covers GNU manuals, but I don't see anything similar on the Baen site.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Interesting. Given that Moon just had a book published by Baen and Bujold's second-next book (the one she's writing now) will be published by Baen. I'm a member of the Bujold mailing list and haven't heard anything about her leaving Baen on account of the policies. Her next novel -- fantasy, not SF -- will be published by another publisher because she put it up for auction. Baen bid on it but did not have the high bid.
"If you had the equipment to burn the CDs and print the labels on them (if you were so concerned about appearing cool) you would be a damn fool to pay the money for the CD."
And yet, though I have the equipment to burn CDs and print labels on them, though I make heavy use of Napster, I continue to purchase CDs. Lots of CDs. I'm a bit insulted at being called a fool.
I want to give artists I enjoy money. The artist is alot more likely to create more music if I'm paying him. Purchasing a CD is a convient way to do this. (Sadly, musicians see very little of that money, but that's a different problem.) A CD also marks someone as a real fan.
I have a fairly technical group of friends. They all have easy access to CD burners and high quality printing. They make heavy use of Napster. They uniformly purchase lots of CDs.
Sure there are people who will happily leech this free content. But if these people don't feel ethically bound to pay up, why will they pay up if it isn't available for free legally? The risks of copyright infringement for an individual are negligable. Sure enough, some people have always built up libraries of copied tapes. You're not losing potential revenues if they weren't going to pay anyway.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Publisher x publishes "Expensive Science Book" by Prof Copyright for $180
Publisher y publishes "Dear Science" by Prof Grabbinmoney for $180
"Open Source Science" released
Publisher z publishes "Open Source Science" by O.S.Community for $60
Publisher x publishes "Open Source Science" by O.S.Community for $50
Publisher y publishes "Open Source Science" by O.S.Community for $40
Publisher z publishes "Open Source Science" by O.S.Community for $30 and includes the book on a CD
Publisher x publishes "Open Source Science", "Free Mathematics" and "GNU Computer programming" as an omnibus edition for $60
The price differential with the copyright books is now so big that people are flocking to use "open source science" so
Publisher x publishes "Expensive Science Book" by Prof Copyright for $80
Publisher y publishes "Dear Science" by Prof Grabbinmoney for $80
See, competition leads to lower prices and more choice. And even though the original copyright books were not competing at first, in this example, the open source option caused a big enough price differential to drag their prices down as well (although admitedly, this wouldn't necessarily occur)
Rich
Uhh, They didn't.
WebScriptions has been running for over a year. Elizabeth Moon has books in the December 1999 and the December 2000 WebScriptions and her lastest book =Against the Odds= was just released by Baen last month.
Lois has published one book outside of Baen, primarily because Baen got outbid in an auction. But
=A Civil Campaign= is a WebScription and Lois has even written an essay about WebScriptions approving of it highly. See:
Lois McMaster Bujold on Book Distribution 2000
Doesn't feel like they left to me.
http://www.webscription.netWebScriptions.net
I haven't heard of these authors either, but this is mainly due to the fact that I typically don't read pulp fiction. However a quick search on Amazon ( forgive me all you boycotters out there, but their reader review section is informative), showed that Amazon is selling books by all of these authors and that most of their books are fairly well reviewed by the readers.
Most of the authors averaged about 3.5/5 for their books, but Eric Flint averaged 4/5 and K. D. Wentworth averaged 4.5/5. The rating of these books is on par with the "popular" authors like Stephen King.
It may be that the difference between a "no-name" author and a popular author is a simple matter of fate which allows one to get name exposure in the marketplace - and nothing to do with writing ability. After Stephen King first became popular, he managed to produce quite a few mediocre books that made their way to the best sellers list - not because they were good books, but because he had a sufficiently large established audience of readers.
For these authors on Baen, some of whom have had quite favorable reviews of their works, then perhaps the only thing seperating them from being "Popular" is that they don't have a large following - and, if Eric Flint is correct in his assumption, that if enough people find these works and like them, then these authors will generate more sales and become "popular" authors.
"Microsoft has made computing accessible to a population who would otherwise not be able to use computers" - B. Kernigha
This is a method of publicity, yes--but then, Baen considers its entire Webscription program itself to be little more a method of publicity, as low as the prices are that it charges--and there are those better-known authors who are incensed at having to sell their books so cheaply (and without DRM copy-protection to boot).
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
A counterexample: I've had a few thousand dollars in sales of my book, which is available as a free download. (A few more k$ and I'll have made back my investment in printing!
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This is why i keep buying Baen books.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Can anyone list any books that they recommend that are published by Baen? I'd be interested in supporting this if someone can whip up my interest... I'm into sci-fi, but I'll do fantasy or mystery if I'm inclined...
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
I can't. I won't read a book on the computer but I will read one on my Palm.
Defecation occurs.
Yes, it is a great idea, but I guess you just don't have the imagination to see it.
First, nobody was talking about making anybody do anything. I feel certain that there are a lot of teachers who are passionate about their subjects and would love to contribute to such a product.
Second, if the Schools could get away with paying less for text books, they'd have more money for, yes you guessed it, more teachers or higher teacher salaries.
While you might be able to find some odd case where a professional teacher makes less than someone in management at a McDonald's, by and large, the average teacher earns a great deal more than the average burger flipper. Heck, I'd take the low-end teaching job over the McDonald's managers job, which might, possibly be comparable in salary, any day of the week. Fast food restaurants work exempt employees long hours. The work is no fun and you have to ride heard on a bunch of inattentive, disobedient, ritalin-addled teenagers for 16 hours a day.
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it is very difficult to sit there for hours on end and read the text on the screen. The text starts to blur
Not if you're using an LCD, especially with subpixel text rendering. It's at least five times sharper than the average CRT.
there wasn't really any space between the lines
That's what style sheets are for. Make one with one of those CSS tools and use it.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Still listed as pending.... Hmmm.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
I'm working with a group at Rice University that is putting some of our textbook content online. It's only reached a useful state this summer, and online texts are currently being used as a supplement for two ELEC courses here.
We've got our own DTD (although are trying to borrow from existing stuff like the Dublin Core elements when possible) to do page markup for educational content, and XSL+CSS stylesheets to turn that into XHTML+MathML that browsers (well, currently just Mozilla; soon IE too we hope) can read.
Wish I could give you a URL, but all the good stuff is being restricted to on-campus access right now.
There's also a couple universities working on a similar system, and a company doing the same sort of thing (although aimed more at corporate training). It's an idea whose time has come; it's just a question of who gets there first.
Legal: http://www.freesfonline.de/
l
Mostly Illegal: http://www.lib.ru/lat/ (yes, it's in russian. Some of their stuff is in English, tho. Look for authors you know, modulo transliteration (Ray Bradbury -> Rej Bredberi))
Also, Google turns up some great stuff, if you just put in the title of the book and the author: the search "Bullet In The Brain" Tobias Wolff turns up, in the first 20, http://www.wam.umd.edu/~shaner/stories/bullet.htm
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
I agree with you...I don't see why people are so scared. (Well, I do, but I'll get there.)
Is this really that big of a deal?
I've watched alot of people arguing over mp3s in the last several months. At the peak of my CD buying days I had about 200 or more. Now I'm down to about 50, which are the CDs that are of such quality that I haven't grown tired of listening to them in years. CDs I bought for one song, or as an impulse, or that I ended up not liking as much as I thought I would, have all been sold off. I download mp3s at a rate of maybe 10/week. I download an mp3 for one of three purposes:
I feel that the CD is worth my money, which I had to earn, and have very little of to spare.
You can substitute any media you want in the above example, really. The simple fact is that even with the spreading of portable mp3 players, the sound quality is not as good as the CD and most people will not want to be so dependent on their computers. So you can get a book online for free, so what? Very few people will want to read anything of that great a length online. Even those who pay in paper and printer ink to make a physical copy will then be stuck with a big stack of papers that won't sit neatly on a bookshelf or be particularly easy to read. One thing I never hear people mention is art. I'm a visual artist, and this seems signifigant to me. You can type in a famous artist's name and pull up a number of scans of an artwork on any search engine. You can print them out and hang them on your wall, or even print them on t-shirts. Are the galleries and poster companies throwing temper-tantrums over this? I certainly haven't heard anything. People still pay art museums and poster companies for the work in question. In fact, they may see something they like and then go to a museum they might otherwise have never visited. I don't see how books or music are any different. There's not a whole lot of pleasure in sitting in a sunny window reading a computer monitor, and you certainly don't want to be carrying a loose stack of papers on an airplane, train, or sit with it under a tree. And I don't know about you, but when I'm listening to Beethoven's 9th, I want it to sound like I am *there*, in the highest quality CD sound possible.
I think the real issue here is that companies are afraid that now they will actually have to produce material WORTH what they charge you for it. If I want to hear an original, interesting song and all the music companies want to offer me is people squeaking "Happy Birthday" on cheap kazoos, should I be expected to buy it? Before mp3, the music companies could push whatever they wanted and people would buy it because they didn't know better. Now anyone with a band can record a song and distribute it. The solution is for the record companies to strive to produce higher quality, better-sound CDs, and music that doesn't suck. I think the only thing keeping them in business now are the radio stations (to which there are online alternatives, even) and MTV. It's easier to try to eliminate/control the competition than cut into profits to produce a higher quality product.
The publishers may be afraid of e-books or piracy, but they really have no reason to be. They simply need to learn from the music industry's mistakes. Concentrate on higher-quality products, more variety, and reasonable prices. The record companies aren't losing any money on me -- when it costs more to buy one CD than it does to pay for my electric bill, ISP, or a week's worth of groceries, you can guess which comes first. Billy Joe Bubble Gum Synth Pop who gets 75% of the radio/MTV playtime is not worth that kind of money. And for the GOOD musicians/authors/artists -- I also would like to see more of them inventing ways to cut out the middle men so that I can reward and thank them for the work they create without having most of my money go to someone else.
-The Wicked One
First up, a general comment: the best thing about this Slashdot article is not the free books at the other end (I'm not planning on reading any of them -- no time for it at the moment) but rather the remarkably clueful commentary about why giving away free e-books is a good idea. Read it. I doubt I'll read anything else more interesting than it today.
But now, in direct response to the previous poster, advances in publishing technologies (like laser printers and CD burners) are not going to put authors and musicians out of business. They might put publishers out of business eventually, but that's just the nature of change. On the other hand, maybe publishers will just change what it is they do and become marketers rather than manufacturers.
But authors and musicians, as the article on the site points out, are in no danger of being replaced by machines. If people want to read books and listen to music, then someone needs to be writing the books and composing and playing the music. If there are enough people willing to part with enough money to create a market for books and music, then the market will arise one way or another, with "copyright" or without.
At the moment, all remuneration for copyrighted works is done retrospectively: the artist or author has already done all their work by the time you pay for a CD or book. If this scheme breaks down because of rampant "piracy", then it may eventually mutate into a scheme whereby artists and authors start with loss leaders, making some works available for free, then saying "there's more where that came from if enough people send me money".
There's a technological hurdle to overcome here, of course. It can't work without extraordinary ease of communication and payment. We've basically got the former now, but not the latter. The payment technologies which do exist still haven't quite managed to be killer apps. Reading the author's book is pretty easy, but getting him a payment easily is another matter. When it becomes as easy as tossing a coin in a busker's hat, the economics of the information-based markets will change almost overnight.
When such technology manages to break past the widespread-acceptance barrier, my prediction is that the giant faceless corporations of the entertainment industry will be badly undermined by the fact that new artists will get a much better deal in the free marketplace than by signing up with them. The publishers will find their supply of new talent cut off, and eventually have nothing new to sell. Their reduced dominance may persuade lawmakers to stop extending their copyrights retrospectively and making draconian "protective" laws. Then what will they do? They'll actually have to start providing a service to artists and audiences, or nobody will notice their passing.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I read the intros/first chapters of about half the books up there, and .. unfortunately found none of them appealing. *sigh*
I really wanted to, they just seem like what I call the 80% of science fiction. Bland prose.. ungripping stories.. blah. My tastes aren't everyone's I suppose.. some people think David Drake is a great read, I think it's pretty mindless.
I will give them this, I actually picked up half these books and tried reading them.. Which given the covers I would never have done in the store. I would really love it if more authors would do this.. it lets me browse books when i have time, not just when I'm in the store.
I wonder if the first impression effect occurs differently on web browsers than paper...
-josh
I don't find it any more fatiguing than reading a paper book; in fact, the opposite is often the case. Maybe I'm an exception, but when you consider how many of us work in front of a computer for 8-10 hours a day, then come home and surf the web until bedtime, I doubt I'm the only one capable of it. Most people who find the idea inconceivable haven't actually tried it -- which is not to say that it doesn't take some getting used to.
Of course, I still read paper books, but with a two-year-old running loose, stealing my bookmark, kicking the books under the sofa, etc. I find it more convenient to do most of my reading on the computer. YMMV.
Whoa! Look out, Amazon!
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Ok, so books are open. 1. Can somebody actually read 150-1000 pages of text off a computer monitor without going blind? 2. Printing will cost more than just buying it. For me, I perfer a hard copy to take with me in my pocket or what not.
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
I still have issue with trying to read books online. I mean, I think it's great that they're making them available for free, but to me it's just too damn irritating to read a book via my monitor.
I haven't tried any handheld book devices, and i'm curious to see how they are, but for now I much prefer the good old fashioned dead tree books.
You know, it isn't pirating. Someone isn't scanning/typing books in and giving them to someone else... It's nothing like Napster because the books are voluntarily placed there by the creators of that piece of work. By the way, I thoroughly enjoy reading, especially some older Drangonlance books, etc..
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With the potential for new authors to have their work seen, a lot of technologists say we should be seeing a new philosophical rebirth. So where is it? Has the new Library of Alexandria been torched in the process, or may the day yet come?
Pax Digitalia
Very true. However, electronic texts have one very distinct advantage, which has only been tangentially touched on:
Ease of transport.
I have a number of books on CD. (Most are reference books, although I have Project Gutenberg's archives on a pair of CDs, courtesy of Walnut Creek.) True, they're not as convenient as paper books, but they're terrific when I need to travel; much lighter and more compact than stacks of books.
Or, for a more common example: I am a Perl programmer, and therefore lazy. Occasionally I need to refresh my memory on some syntax issue.* I could walk across the room, pick my copy of Programming Perl out of the bookcase, flip to the index, flip to the correct section, and read. However, it's much easier for me to grab my Perl CD Bookshelf, click, click, click, done. Same for Design Patterns.
Other posters in this story have mentioned PDAs much more skillfully than I can, so I won't go there.
* Amazingly, despite Perl's clean and elegant syntax, I still need to look up the meaning of simple expressions like "$[=$.".
In particular I thought that elementary or middle school math books might be a perfect candidate. Math concepts don't change wildly, and the structure seems pretty straightforward...concept, examples, problems... I even started working on an XML DTD to define this.
Anyone else think this might be useful?
Baen webscriptions are a pretty good deal as well. For only $10 for four whole books and you can download them using any format you want, for your PDA, PalmPilot, PC desktop hard drive or print the whole thing out and kill a forest of trees - whatever... Weber's stuff is pretty good and he's got one of his books on the Free Library as well! http://bar.baen.com/~bar
As noted on the site, a lot of sales are generated by "word of mouth," which can be stimulated by circulating the work in any way possible - - mailing out free copies, on the internet, etc. For this same reason, a lot of musical artists that no one has ever heard of supported mp3.com. But the simple fact is popular, established artists, like Metallica and Stephen King, don't need to generate word of mouth, and probably wouldn't willingly make their commercially available works accessible for free online. And the two media - - mp3 music files and online texts - - really aren't so different. They both suffer from degradation, in a fashion. With an online book, you don't get the glossy cover, the hard spine, the crisp pages, all assembled into a nice package. But realistically, no one can say with a straight face that someone who downloaded a copy of a commercially available work would be likely to go out and purchase a copy. That said, it doesn't mean that established artists couldn't use online publication to release other works that aren't commercially available, to establish and maintain good will among their fan base.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Music had never operated the same way books do, and will continue to do. It is unfortunate, as it seems to me that authors and publishing companies have been around for years while thier work was being litterally given away at the library. Maybe its experience talking to them, but it seems that the instant bottom line vs future sales argument might mean something to record companies.
$15 today for the music I "stole" off of napster doesn't do much, but if I like the band I might buy 5 or 6 of thier future CD's that I would have otherwise not purchased. Lets see, $15 today or $90 in a year, which is more money.
It is a relief to see someone take the proverbial head out of the ass and do something worth while for consumer rights and privlidges.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
Bottom line is, having books and music available online has caused me to buy MORE instead of less.
Yes, but that's only because the existing technology/medium is not sufficient for your needs. Wanting to read a book at night without staring at the radiation from a CRT or handheld display and also the desire to keep a book in your bookshelf to impress the chicks; but those are the reasons you bought the book - not some moral obligation you felt to pay a usage fees.
Books will continue to hold this advantage for a while. The same is not true for CDs, etc. If you had the equipment to burn the CDs and print the labels on them (if you were so concerned about appearing cool) you would be a damn fool to pay the money for the CD.
It would be very foolish for the music industry to assume that people downloading music for free will always automatically want to buy it if it turns out to be good.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Netlibrary has a bunch of free books on their site - 'though I think most of them are just from project gutenburg.
Forget free though: Anyone interested in cognitive science can get access to all the MIT press books in cognitive science* at netlibrary (in encrypted downloadable and web form) for just $120 (students) or $240 (everyone else) by going to cognet.mit.edu. It also includes access to the MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences, and The New Cognitive Neurosciences 2nd Ed, and everything else they say they offer (the "community" aspect is non existent though - it basically consists of announcements {talks, seminars}, and interesting links.
*(includes hundreds of books in: neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, AI {genetic algorithms, computational intelligence, neural networks, etc}, linguistics, culture, evolutionary biology, and several other topics).
I downloaded three of the .prc books. Unfortunately, they are loaded with HTML tags. I guess another option is to load the HTML pages using AvantGo.
Defecation occurs.
Amigori
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Books are a great alternative to video games.
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
"Light and Matter Physics" High School/Community college level.
"Handbook Of Applied Cryptography"
"Numerical Recipes in {c, fortran}"
"The Scientist & Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing"
"Using Z"
"The Red Book"
etc. I'm sure there are a ton of others.
GNUArt is an organization which approach consists of GPL'ing Art under virtual forms.
The difference with what's happening here is that if these books were GPL'ed, they'd not only be free of charge but they could also be reworked by anybody prior to being distributed once again for free. Well, you know the GPL, don't you ?
Anyway, even if they only made these books free as in free beer, it is a good thing that these authors accepted to take whatever some might call a "risk".
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
but those are the reasons you bought the book - not some moral obligation you felt to pay a usage fees.
I've purchased CDs from MP3.com for that very reason. I want to support the artists whose music I like. I've downloaded entire albums from mp3.com, yet I still paid for them. Now I'm sure there are a lot of kids out there that download stuff for free and never give it a second thought. But they usually don't have the tons of cash it takes to buy the CDs anyway, I know I never did. It's the post-college crowd that will be more likely to pay I think.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The next step is to put our money where our mouths are. If you read these books and think they're any good, go buy them.
Prove to the publisher that this sort of experiment is good for them, and we'll see more of it. Don't just post to /. and say you like it.
Just my $.02
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brave little toaster
"Remember, don't try this at home until the statute of limitations has expired."
I googled the three Drake titles, and got copyrights of 1997, 1998, and 1999 (not in that order).
Most of his work doesn't push my buttons, and in fact I didn't even bother finishing his overhyped Lord of the Isles, but I heartily recommend his old novel Birds of Prey. SciFi meets ancient Rome, kind of thing. That one really ought to be made into a movie.
If you like Birds of Prey, then try his Vettius and Friends, which is a collection of short stories set in ancient Rome (sans SciFi, with a couple of exceptions), including a wonderful man vs. shark story that purportedly predates Jaws.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Honestly I haven't heard a thing about any of these authors, and right now there's only 5 or 6 of them listed on this webpage, and only 2 or 3 books per author. Have these guys been rejected by major publishing companies and this is their way of getting their names out?
Now if these guys are popular artists and people have heard of them I apologize. But I've worked in some libraries for quite a few years and I can't judge whether or not these guys actually have a popular following yet... maybe this is their way of grabbing 15 minutes of fame =)
I agree personally...I think this will improve sales. Granted, people will use a feature such as this to get a feel for different books on different subjects. But I feel confident that once they find a book online that they use regularly and find resourceful, they will more-than-likely purchase it. I know this is my case, I couldn't stand to read an entire book online.
And hey, it sure makes finding passages easier when the book is online, my brain doesn't have that trusty "Find Next" feature. =)
The sad truth is I think people will print these out if they seriously want to read it. This really wastes the concept of electronic books, but I know people who print out all of their e-mail.
Seriously, I think that this method is the best way to expose your writing. Get people wanting more. You also run the risk of being exposed for the hack author you may be. Sell some books, put some online, but always put the older ones online. Throw in a dash of exclusive e-book and you have yourself a business plan.
My preferred way to read e-books would be on a paper-white, high-contrast, reflective display (currently only known as print), so I hope they get those printable monitors (Slashdot, July 5, 2000) on the market!
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I just bought an excellent SSL/TLS book on the basis of the chapters the author had graciously posted online. Those chapters helped me a lot, and even though I have ethernet to my bedroom, curling up with my laptop is only nice some (okay, okay most) of the time...
I think the argument could quite easily be extended to the dreaded MP3 format. Yes, I have several gig of mp3's, both at home and at work, but I also own several hundred CD's. (yeah, I've been meaning to convert them to Ogg...) The point is that if I like the mp3, more often than not, I'll buy the CD. As much as the online world is a part of my life, there is a feeling to having the physical media which isn't the same from a ripped or burned copy. A large number of CD's and books I own would never have even been considered if I couldn't try them online first.
Doncha think an interesting poll would be: "What percent of the MP3's you actually listen to do you own a 'real' copy of?"
Books (unlike music) are not severely overpriced. I don't mind paying $8 CAN for a physical book. I can take a book anywhere, and read it anytime without having to worry about batteries.
I would also not mind paying a decent price for a CD. Unfortunetly, Record Companies charge obscene amounts of money for a CD (which costs pennies to manufacture, and the artist gets less money from each CD than a writer gets from a book). Music piracy is a result of the record companies charging too much.
Baen has data to prove that giving away ebooks increases sales. Read the information posted at http://www.baen.com and read Eric Flint's commentary on the Free Library. If you're a graduate student, then you better learn how to do research properly. Go to the source, read EVERYTHING and cite when you reference it.
I think this is a great idea for out of print books. Some of the lesser known or less popular Sci-fi books you just can't find anymore. Seen Larry Niven's Inferno anywhere lately? How about Phillip Jose Farmer's Riverworld or The World of Tiers series? Used book stores if your lucky.
One school says: free online content promote piracy, hurt sales.
Another school says: free online content promote the content, help sales.
Experiment: let the authors to choose whether to put their books online for free, and compare the sales figure overtime (use the sales figure before free release as control) or to other authors' works.
Conclusion? Extremely difficult to draw any scientific conclusion because of the SELF SELECTION. The authors choose to release their books free because they get comparatively higher benefits from the promotional/network effects than the authors choose not to release online. However, comparing sales figure overtime or across authors capture this comparative difference at the same time.
A better natural experiment is to randomly releasing the books free, independently from any authors' or publishers' preferences.
Or we model the decision and incorporate exogeneous factors in this estimation (Heckman's 2-stage method?) AFAIK, I haven't come across anything in this area yet.
I should go back to my desk and start to do a part of my thesis on this.
A sig is redundant.
But they usually don't have the tons of cash it takes to buy the CDs anyway,
This comment illustrate what's the biggest fallacy on 'piracy'. Fact: most people have a limited budget to buy CD / software. Therefore, counting every 'pirated' product as a lost income for 'IP producers' is wrong; since if there was'nt any 'pirating' means available, most people would not have bought more. Therefore the theoretical loss is zero, nil, nada, zilch.
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While I am completely against the existance of the Dragonlance books, as I think they are cliched, idiotic GARBAGE...some of the worst attempts to ape (not imitate..APE) Tolkien EVER...I think they're the perfect example of the sort of book that (IMO) I THINK would be best sold this way. Something where you can put COMPLETE, SELF-CONTAINED stories online...and a lot of them, even...and still have a lot of other stuff which the readers would be interested in, but have to pay for to get.
Or how about back to LOTR, which has popped up a bit in this article...give away the Hobbit, but you have to pay for LOTR
It would be very foolish for the music industry to assume that people downloading music for free will always automatically want to buy it if it turns out to be good.
On the contrary again, let me tell you, I live in Buenos Aires / Argentina, where you receive everyday in the mail, lists and lists of CD's (MP3 encoded) containing the complete set of albums of mainstream artists for just $5.-
But... I'm buying more CD's now than before, why?, because napster helpme with unknown bands that I didn't know they ever existed before.
And with alternative music this is TRUE with capitals
I've to tell you that I've an advantage, I use to travel to Brasil once a month, and the CD's there are $10.- much less that the 18-22 range in Argentina (which brings other issue, the political price of CD's, but this is a whole topic to be discussed apart).
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
I tried curling up with one in my bed but the damn monitor cord wouldn't reach.
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I wear pants.