Slashdot Mirror
What if Harry Potter 5 Was an E-Book?
hakkikt sent a link to a highly speculative what if story on Harry Potter 5 as an E-Book.
The suggestions are pretty extreme- going so far as to saying that this
one book could change the fates of the publishing industry, book stores,
and could even make E-Books more then a pipe dream. Personally I'd
love to see it available digitally, but I still want a real hardcover
copy, and I can't imagine hundreds of thousands of kids staying up
late at night with laptops under their covers instead of the far more
traditional book & flashlight. Food for thought, but I can't really
take it seriously.
No one would have ever heard of it because no parent in their right mind would buy an expensive gadget just to read the damn thing.
If the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew was good enough for the parents, it's good enough for the kids.
Something that wasn't (I think) clear from the
I think you'd find a vast amount of interest in hacking e-books, putting the documents online (or at least on a local hard drive), and then printing them out for distribution among one's fellow fifth-graders. Not everybody's mommy and daddy can afford to buy an electronic bookreader.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
That's one of the first Slashdot topics in a while that's made me stop and say, 'wow.'
I might even buy one of those gizmos.
I have long hated the concept of e-books. They're expensive, they forgo all of the benefits of a book, a pile of e-book ram cards is nothing like a shelf full of paper books.
But I might buy one if that was the only way to get the next Harry Potter book, and I suspect that a lot of other people would, too. I'd hate having to do it, mind you, but it would be an amazingly cunning, effective way to get the readers into a broad range of people's hands.
God, I hope it doesn't happen, but "wow," nonetheless.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Battery power is no longer an issue, flat screens are cheap, displays come even close to the contrast and resolution of ink on paper, and content producers get comfortable with the truth that they can never prevent all copying. When that all happens, this may be possible...
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I'm involved with eBook standards development (check out www.openebook.org), and I'm not very optimistic about the future of eBooks as they stand. There is really no standardization in terms of reading devices, and no real consumer market for an eBook. What's going to make eBooks run is added-value, not great content - if the Harry Potter eBook contained video, sound, games, etc., THEN I'd be looking to buy an eBook. My guess is that for eBooks to exist mainly as books, their future is going to be in academia and reference - things that really can be better with a searchable interface, or other technological enhancements. Current fiction, unless given some sort of sensory enhancement, won't cut it in the eBook world.
"What we have here, is a failure to communicate." - Cool Hand Luke
For me, Harry Potter 1 was an e-book.
Sure, it was a pirate copy and full of OCR introduced typos, but I sure as hell wasn't going to go spend my money on a kid's book, despite the hype.
I figured, what the hell. Let's see what's so interesting.
Much to my surprise, I was blown away. Harry Potter was a morality play couched in terms of a fantasy novel. There were some rough moments... like at the end where the bad guy gives away the plot.
(Rowling's writing has improved since)
Still, I was fascinated. I downloaded the second and the third, quickly reading through them and finding scathing comments about the classism, the futility of punitive imprisonment, and the state of charity in the world.
When I went to look for the fourth book, it was not available. Instead, I went to Barnes and Noble that evening and paid 21.95 for the big hardbound copy of 'HP and the Goblet of Fire'. Since, I've put down money for all 3 of the others as well.
If Harry Potter 5 is an e-book, neither Rowling nor her publisher should fear piracy. The people who would have bought the book will buy it anyway, and the electronic copies floating around will inspire a few more to buy it as well.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I don't think the writer really understands the point of a "killer app." It's not any particular document, but rather an APPLICATION. that said, I think he makes a very valid point. If people HAD to buy eBooks to get crack (or harry potter, or whatever may happen to be "hot" at any given moment... think tickle-me-elmos or pokemon) then the market would take off. Until the fad died out, that is.
:)
:) but to get back on point, let me re-iterate what the author of the article, and about a billion other people surely know.
eBooks will *never* catch on this way, though. The likelihood of any author (especially one so popular as JK Rowling) publishing a potential best-selling book ONLY in the fragile and pretty much non-existant eBook market is virtually nil.
Plus we'd all have to boycott Harry Potter because of the eeeeevil eBook maker's coalition (ya know, that whole adobe, FBI, dmitri skylakarov, and DMCA stuff
eBooks will, in my not-so-humble and actually quite arrogant opinion, never catch on until you can read them just as well as you can read books. This means terrific resolution, the ability to throw them anywhere, and definately cheaper readers. Resolution is really the key thing though. I much much prefer to read a newspaper, even with the nasty ink it ges on my hands, than a web page. Its just easier on the eyes. And my monitor is a not-too-shabby Apple LCD display. The digital-ink thing seems to me to be the key to this. But thats far off in the distant future (oh, sure, they have prototypes for bill-boards now, but nothing nearly good enough for, say, a newspaper).
Okay, so most of that was ridiculously offtopic (what was the question again? oh yeah. Harry Potter
As the author puts it :
"Jo Rowling [...] absolutely loves dear old-fashioned, manually operated, non-electronic storybooks."
Yeah, and from what I heard about the movie she isn't particularly affectionate with other technological "magic" either. So I don't anticipate a Potter eBook rollout soon.
LOL. I know exactly what would happen if Harry Potter would be released as an e-book: it would shrivel and die.
It would not be considered the legitimate sequel.
It would be the dreaded asterisk, as in: "Harry Potter has spawned 5* sequels" Then: "* Including one 'electronic' version of Potter's adventures."
There is nothing compelling about e-books. Nothing. As someone who has 1500+ books in my house -- everything from Faulker to Stephen Levy -- I can categorically state that the e-book is now, and forever will remain, a bastard child.
There's a reason "books" have survived for over 500 years. They're almost perfect: portable, lightweight, cheap. Easy to buy, easy to trade, easy to sell.
Indie bookstores will not shrivel up and die if Harry Potter 5 is released electronically. They'll just keep selling what they're selling, keep doing what they're doing.
Much as some folks would like to think it, Harry Potter is not the be-all and end-all of literature. The article seems to forget that books have a 500 year history. Rowling is today's top-selling author (or whatever she's considered) but she's not *tomorrow's top-selling author.* There will be plenty more J.K. Rowling's over the next decade or so.
And I think that's fine. More power to 'em.
BTW, can anyone actually imagine reading Proust as an e-book? I mean, maybe it's just me, but I find e-books incredibly difficult to read for sustained periods of time. It's not unusual for me to spend 8, 10, sometimes 12 hours reading a book cover-to-cover. It's hard enough to do with a "real" book (I can't believe I'm writing that -- a "real" book -- LOL) but can you do that with an e-book? Do you even *want* to that with an e-book? And imagine forcing yourself to read an large, long e-book for a class -- by an author you don't care for but that you're forced to read.
Faulkner as an e-book? Can you imagine it?
Hemingway, maybe. But Faulkner? Melville? It would drive one batty.
Anyway, this article is nonsense. No, that's not me spouting flame-bait, it's me just giving an opinion.
J.K. Rowling may be popular, but -- please -- she's in no position to "kill" the book. Or drive booksellers out of business.
ROTLMAO.
I see your point, but I think your undervaluing the real reason she enjoys it, You.
I bet if you had a decent eBook reader, smeing handheld, she would still unjoy it. Clearly she has related closing the book with going to sleep, but you could accomplish the same thing with a cover.
Plus, you could change the font type and size, and definitions, add personalization, all kinds of stuff that would make it easier to readit on her own. Depending on age, obviously.
The key is in the reader. When I read to my son(4), He prefers to have me lie down next to him, and we both look up at the book while I read.
finnally, congratulation on taking the time to read to your children. we all benefit from that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I can't imagine how anyone in their right mind would want to read an E-book.
.. I spend 8-9 hours at work in front of a moniter, and another 2-3 at LEAST at home. [be it contract work or Counter Strike]
.. is for about an hour before I go to sleep, I read. I read .. and I read like the wind .. [120 pages an hour EASY .. sometimes up to 300]
.. will never replace a simple $6.99 paperback.
.. an e-book reader runs about $269.00 when i last checked [a pal bought one]. Assuming that E-books were either warez or free .. I would have to read about 40 books to make that cheaper than buying paperbacks. [about 2-3 months .. i read over 120 books a year easy].
.. if i know they destroy books, its cheap enough to buy them their own copy.] Unless my pal's family all have e-readers, thats pretty hard to do with a digital book.
.. but not for long .. there is still the classic charm of a physical book to consider.
As a programmer/Web developer
My one love of the evening
I consider this *RESTING* my eyes after a day of irradiating them. E-books, not matter how much the geeky quirky appeal they have to me
First off
For me that give it a chance at being a $$ savings (if we forget about the pleasure of holding a book), but what about my fieance` who reads like 5 books a year ? would never be worth it!
The other big selling point of a normal book, is i can give it to someone else. [or
e-paper would make me doubt my stance
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
At first I agreed with this sentiment, however, after reading though Bruce Eckels "Thinking in Java 2nd ed." online link to bookI was hooked.
Ed Roman's "Mastering Enterprise Java Beans" is also a free book available at theserverside.com
BTW: After going through them online, I went ahead and purchased the tree versions as well. From the looks of the amazon.com sales rankings, so did a lot of other people. Perhaps this model is not *that* bad for book publication.
I have to agree...I have read both "The hacker crackdown" and "In the beginning there was the command line" on my m125- its easy and fun. And those two books are available for free at memoware
You are really not doing any good with that attitude. What do you think all the monks said after Gutenberg invented the printing press? I'd imagine it was something like, "Oh, those ugly little books are so shoddy, and they're downright illegible." I don't count my books, but I've got enough already to keep me busy until the day I die. OTOH, I really like e-books. Your disdain might lie in your aesthetics. Because while e-books as objects aren't compelling (they are virtual and intangible), the format works well. After initially being put off by the idea, I've found that I'm a much more efficient reader of an e-book than of the bound version. HTML kicks ass for presenting content. I can read then entire book as one page if I want, and a hyperlinked index is better than anything a printed book can offer.
This works amazingly well with laberinthian computer books. I zoomed through the 900+ page JavaScript Rhino book, whereas the sheer density of the bound version put me off. Granted, that's not pleasure reading, and it is more than a convenience having a browser available while reading about JavaScript. Still, I have read several literary classics on my Palm (Frankenstein, some Mark Twain stuff). Have you even looked at Project Gutenberg? Why, there are six entries for Proust. Can you still not imagine it? I downloaded the complete works of Mark Twain (702K!!! ~25MB unzipped!!). I discovered a lot of material I had never heard of before (Hilarious stuff like "Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses"), and I have two huge sets (25+ volumes) of Twain's work! So you do disservice both to literature and the WWW with your comment.
Here's the problem: non-indexed PDF and PostScript e-books. This is so not the way to go. These are far inferior to printed books. Some of the e-books I have are PDFs pirated from the publishing industry, before the books had even been properly edited. Also, a fucking text file is a more flexible version than PDF and PS. Then again, I use xpdf and gv, which may lack some 'Find' feature that Adobe or other viewers might have. But I really love Safari. I just wish you could download them, and that they wouldn't try to pad their selections with multiple editions of the same book, outdated books, other crap, etc.
Also, why would Hemingway work & not Faulkner or Melville? It took me months to read Moby Dick, and it sucked to keep having to return it to the library and check it out again. Melville would love the Web, with all of his little digressions.
I think "real" books as we know it have many advantages over e-books. They are easier on your eyes, are easily portable (for those of us who don't have a pda), cheap, and acceptance in the market. They have been around for over 500 years!
E-books will not eat into the market for books until they are at least as good as real books. And I think that will only happen when electronic paper becomes a reality.
Noone in their right mind would think that E-books have any chance of displacing regular books in the forseeable future. They have very little charm and are very expensive, especially in the sense that you need several expensive units to let the whole family read a book each at the same time.
In addition, books are a very well established symbol of status. People love to have lots of books in their shelfs so they can give the impression that they are well-read people. How can E-books ever fill up your bookshelves?
What CAN be argued is that E-books might become a success in the way that it becomes a reasonable supplement to regular books. I can see this. Instead of bringing several heavy books with you on a trip, you can just bring one reasonable unit.
The books will still have to be considerably cheaper in electronic form, and not just a way to make more money, as the music companies seem to think about downloadable music.
"evil forces"
Hmm...i've heard of a good deal of evil forces...most about people in history trying to shove there false morality on others that were unwilling. Haven't you figured out by now that what you know as "evil" isn't into making itself apparent? This is a crap book where it (even if the book were extreme) could be read by a child and survived by the help of a parent who gives half a rats ass. You know, maybe guide the child?
If you think that evil can be avoided by not reading a friggin poor childrens book then you are on a strange train of denial. In your (and most) of our lifespans, we will be mislead, will be assaulted (virbally, legally, morally), and these things will be perpetrated by people who actually think they are doing good! Perception of evil is just as big a part as evil itself. If you think that Star Wars is even moderatly a movie that promotes evil, then woe to the rest of entertainment, because it is blown out of the water by even the frigging news. Please describe how SW promoted evil? I'd like to see. And guess what, I don't give a rats ass if these Wiccans are going around promoting there religion. I see Christians 99.99999999% of the time doing that very same thing. That is how organized religion stays in business. Everyone has as much right to promote there beliefs as everyone else. And I fear Christians far more then I will every fear Wiccians. For one, there are a lot more of them. It is the prodominant religion. But the Wiccans I know tend to stay out of peoples business. You can't say that about most Christians who make it a point to prove why that they should have input into everyones daily lives. Christians are the reason that I am not one. I know a few cecent types, but the vast majority you hear about (probably because the decent ones who don't judge are never heard of.) lust after explaining why this is evil and that is immoral. I have absolutely no belief structure short of the idea that probably everyone else in the world have no clue as to what is actually going on. I am not agnostic, atheist, satanist, wiccian, mac, pc, *nix, I just am. Members of most religions I have tested have shown me that either there is serious error execution in (i.e. Judge not less the be judged yourself, Love thy neighbor), or the whole belief system is shit. Other then that there is always the "this makes no sense at all" issue. But getting back to the original subject, what would you suggest as "decent" viewing material if Star Wars is so objectionable? I'd love to see this answer. I bet Evil Dead is waaaay out of the picture, huh? Or is that plot too thich to discern that it is a comedy and isn't promoting demonic posession. I guess it all rolls back to the problem with stupid people. Well, if that is your goal, then good luck, because that is a constant in this universe. As constant as the concept of good and evil. It isn't going away. We are stuck with it. Try to live up to your own beliefs and not make it all the more MISERABLE for your fellow person. Thanks. Nye bye