The Future Of The Book

Detritus writes: "First Monday, a peer-reviewed journal on, and about, the Internet, has published an excellent and thought provoking paper by Clifford Lynch, the Director of the Coalition for Networked Information, titled The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World. The paper lays out and examines the complex questions raised by the migration from dead trees to bits, and the competing interests of authors, publishers, readers, libraries and society."

Comments

One thing the article didn't note.

[Apuleius]

The article goes into thorough detail on the problems that could be posed if publishers are allowed to use the new medium to redefine intellectual property rights for text works. A scary portent of the future, and a distillation of those paragraphs would make a good thing to keep on hand to give (for example) your fellow students if your college wants to switch out of textbooks.

But, the article omits the importance of sites like Andamooka and the Gutenberg project, and also the significance of wireless technology and the Web. If I buy an ebook reader of some sort, it had better 1. do HTML, 2. do PDF and PS, 3. do ASCII, 4. let me make downloads of these from whatever sites I want. What does that mean? Any ebook reader must also be a Web pad to get me to buy it. I do believe that thanks to the Web and to sites like those two (and Nupedia, and many more), and thanks to upcoming Web pads, we have dodged a bullet here. (A Web pad with good handwriting recognition would be dreamy. Mmmm..)

Is this enough? No. We need more content on those sites, not to mention more effort to clue in Joe Sixpack about these issues. But things do look good IMHO. Since any ebook reader has to be able to navigate the Web (either through wireless or through a well thought out Web-suck program), ebook buyers won't be too eager to have to buy books with insane reader software and rights management software hassles.

Re:Regular books aren't going anywhere...

[dmorin]

• Can I toss an ebook reader in my pocket without worrying about sitting on it and breaking something?No, nor can you do that with any books other than paperbacks. Can you fit 3 of the biggest brand new hard covers into your carry on for when you're going on a long plane flight? No. But my ebook stays the same size no matter how many books I have with me.
• With books I own, they get torn up... They're bent, torn in places, the spine is messed up. Can I do that with an ebook?Why do you want to? Just because you can?
• What happens when the power goes out and I don't have any charge left in the tablet or whatever I'm using to view the digital text?What happens when the power goes out and you can't read your traditional book at all? My ebook is backlit so even when the subway car stalls in the tunnel and it's pitch black I'm still reading.
• Can I dogear parts of a digital book and go back to them by simply picking it up and opening it?Sure. My ebook always starts on the page I left. That's actually better than dogearing, because I don't crease pages, and my pages won't un-dogear themselves accidentally.
• Will I be able to read an ebook for hours like I can do with regular books and not have any form of eye strain?Good question. I read it for about an hour a day and don't seem to have too many problems. What usually causes the eyestrain people associate with ebooks is the fixed nature of a computer monitor, and not being able to move where the text is. The ebook is in your hands and you can move it around just like a regular book, changing the distance to your eyes, etc.
• If I like the book enough that I loan it to friends or family, will they all have to pay additional licenses or transfer fee just to read it?Finally, a good question. No, the proper billing/licensing model has not yet been determined. That's the big issue right now. Personally I feel it's the exact same as the whole Napster thing, but I can't get people to agree with me.

The arguments against ebooks always start by saying "Let's think of features of books that ebooks don't have, then think of why those features are good, and presto, ebooks therefore must be bad." I mean, sure, crisp page turning and getting ink on your fingers is kinda neat, but is it really necessary? In the days of typewriters (before word processors), you'd see typos, crossouts and whiteout on a typical page. We don't miss that, though, do we? I agree that the billing model needs work. There's actually a more simple problem with billing right now, and that's price setting -- if the new Stephen King hardcover comes out for $22, the ebook costs $22. 6 months later when it's in paperback at $12, the ebook costs $12. That's hardly fair. I'd rather see them fix that problem first and get more people to buy the dang books, and THEN worry about how people are going to loan them to each other. Personally I have hundreds of books, but it's not like I'm a library. I might loan out a small handful a year. It's just not that big a deal to me.

Regular books aren't going anywhere...

[GrandCow]

Microsoft has produced a software product called Microsoft Reader, which turns a PC into an e-book reader, and Dick Brass, the Microsoft executive in charge of the product, is making predictions (supported by a rather flamboyant marketing videotape) that publishing will shift rapidly to electronic formats.

Can I toss an ebook reader in my pocket without worrying about sitting on it and breaking something? With books I own, they get torn up... They're bent, torn in places, the spine is messed up. Can I do that with an ebook? What happens when the power goes out and I don't have any charge left in the tablet or whatever I'm using to view the digital text? Can I dogear parts of a digital book and go back to them by simply picking it up and opening it? Will I be able to read an ebook for hours like I can do with regular books and not have any form of eye strain?

And I guess the most important question on my mind:

If I like the book enough that I loan it to friends or family, will they all have to pay additional licenses or transfer fee just to read it?

I think for now, you can count me out for electronic books

-C

Re:Regular books aren't going anywhere...

[ma_sivakumar]

This reminds me of one of my co-worker, who was against using the PC for customer order maintanance. His argument was "Can I add comments to an entry using a pencil?" "Can I access any entry just by turning a few pages?" "Can I carry it to meetings with customers? "What about when I travel?"

This was a few years back. Today with the availability of PDAs he can do almost everything he wanted. The issue is not the idea itself, but the format in which it is available now.

Just imagine a device which is as big as a paper back novel of present time, which can hold a few hundred titles in it and display the text with the printed quality of today's books? Let it come with an idiot proof outer cover!

Even today's e-book readers have the option to mark where you left reading and go back to it at a latter time. If I recall correct, you have the option of picking from any page, furthest read page, last read page etc

You want to lent it to someone? One solution will be to connect your reader to their's ---SWISH ---the copy of the book your are lending goes through to your friend's machine and your machine loses the copy. It is a move rather than a copy action. When your friend is finished you move it back into your reader. Pretty close to what you have with the print books! eh?

Eye strain? When there were no books, and knowledge were transmitted orally you never strained your eyes by reading, and I am sure one of the argument against the first written word would have been the eye strain! :-) Be open to new ideas! Come on!!

Look at the millions of inventory in each book store, consider the amount of paper each avid reader is holding, e-book will be a great leap forward for man kind in terms of dissemination of knowledge in the most efficient form.

If you further read in the article, it talks about books talking to each other (reminds one of MS "smart tags" :-). I would love that feature. When you read 'A Brief history of Time" you can flip into parts of John Gribbin's "In Search of Schroedinger's Cat". Will be really cool!!

In my opinion, what we need is a good medium and format for accessing e-books and it is a matter of years before we can all enjoy the ultimate reading pleasure.

PS: I really think that the original poster read till the Microsoft part and posted his comment! It is a pretty lengthy article. To read and digest it will take the best part of an hour. I am one quarter of the way into it :-)

I'm genuinely interested!

[Fatal0E]

(at 4.30am no less)

My company publishes PDF's. Me and some of the sales guys are tight and they tell me that they suspect a lot of clients are sharing their publication with the rest of their network effectively pirating our materials. We're relatively small with only about 100k readers so every buck counts. The future of secured (notice I didnt say secure) text would be of a lot of use for me and other small publishers like mine.

Novelists IMO have nothing to worry about, no one likes to curl up to a laptop/e-book when they can't sleep. Besides, if ain't disposable for us, it ain't profitable for them.

Re:I'm genuinely interested!

[Sven Tuerpe]

My company, a research agency, has an inhouse library. We buy books and let everyone read it. As a further service, the library staff even borrows books from other libraries, again for everyone in the company.

What do you think, who is going to ruin whom? And who do you think will design your next copy protection scheme if R&D has died because of every single bit of thought being licensed material without any option to share it with others?

Oh, BTW, every buck counts for us, too. To us scientists, pay per view would mean we had to fill in a form for every access to any publication, calculate the number of readings needed in a project in advance, and being unable to work if the planned amount had been spent.

Now research is much older than your business, as are old-style publishing companies, who survived it. Did you ever consider the possibility of your business model being seriously flawed in that it relies on people who paid you to enforce your rather arbitrary do-not-look-over-my-shoulders rules?