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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.
I could never have imagined ebooks being any good. But My friend said it was great, so I read "The Big U" on my m100. It was amazing. Sounds crazy, but it is easy to pick up/put down real fast since it holds your place automagically. Your arms/hands don't crap trying to hold it open in various contorted ways. Reading in the dark is really easy on your eyes (and spouse) with the backlight. I recommend everyone give it a try.
The four existing Harry Potter books exist in bootleg PDA-format editions. I bought the hardcopies because of ethics, but at my age, sometimes I prefer to read from a discreet Palm Pilot screen rather than from a large, gaudy paperback that says "CHILDREN'S LITERATURE" in every design element. It's also easier to carry.
I would sign this, but don't want emails wanting to know where to get the bootlegs.
would not be the same with an e-book. For something like Harry Potter (we are working through Philosopher's Stone) only a real book can project the right sense of magic and involvement in the story
She looks over my shoulders as I read and when I'm finished I place the bookmark back in and slowly close the book. Her eyes are closed before I can put the book down.
Try THAT with a laptop.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
While I don't particularly regret the decision, I have noticed that there is definitly a considerable amount of eystrain associated with staring at a screen for a few hours at a time, even on a LCD. It really is easier to read stuff on paper, and I actually think I comprehend stuff better when it is less stressful.
Also, you could make the point about just printing out ebooks....but unless you have access to cheap/free printing, that kinda negates the purpose.
While I thing etexts/ebooks are cool, I would choose a real book over an ebook anyday.
I'm only half kidding here. Maybe it's too soon for the next Harry Potter to go Ebook only but I'd wager that maybe releasing the next one this way might not sound so funny.
And they maybe could add some region encoding so that people couldn't read a book in England that was meant for sale to Americans.
In my day we had music disks made of Polyvinyl Chloride. And I didn't hear anyone complaining. And if you scratched one too bad. And you couldn't play them in your car either.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
I've thought a lot about what would make me buy an e-book... it would have to be something that really differentiates it from standard books. Automagic bookmarking is all well and good, and additional content would just be distracting (for fiction... other stuff might need it). Nope the killer feature IMO would be...
Water-proofing.
I would love to sit in a pool or hot-tub and read... you just can't do that (comfortably) with real books.
if the Harry Potter eBook contained video, sound, games, etc.
Gee, if you want these on your book, I'd say you should watch a movie and play the video game. At our home, if I'm reading a book, no one is allow to talk, make noise, or make any movement. Even the bug in the backyard is not allow to hum.
Seriously, a good book should let your imagination run. It shouldn't need that kind of esthetic add-ons. Except for text books, which you might want to have some kind of interactive exercises, etc.
I'll take plain-text ebook anytime.
Recently I saw a review of Xerox working on electronic paper. Yes, it's been around for a few years and will still take a few more to be useable. The demo was for signage in a clothing store. Each 6"x9" piece would be "updated" via a wireless connection from a handheld device. The text on the paper instantly changed to a new price. Pretty good stuff all around.
So what does this have to do with Harry Potter and eBooks. I don't see eBooks surviving for the plain reason that I'm not going to sit at my desk, lug around a lap top or even squint at a palm top to read a book. Not only that but the storage involved for a full book isn't small potatoes on my 2mb Palm. Keeping around 100 novels that I could read at will isn't going to happen.
However, with some more advances in the technology I do see electronic paper as a substitue. By downloading the electronic book from Amazon.com then sending it to my electronic paper, I can now read it like it's a real book. The advantage is that a) it's lighter because it can be a single sheet that just flips between pages b) it can have some features like remembering where I left off or giving me a summary of the book to jump around in and c) it's cheap (or should be by the time the technology gets there) and I can carry it around and even buy a book at a real bookstore, except that they'll just beam a copy of Harry Potter X to my electronic paper instead of getting a disk or paper copy.
I still don't think this will ever replace the traditional kill-a-tree approach to publishing, but it might be more acceptable than a traditonal ebook.
liB
I read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina on my Palm V. The biggest problem there was that the entire book did not fit on my palm, so I had to install part 1, read it, then install part 2. The second problem was I was constantly flipping back trying to remember who this character was, which wasn't at all easy. Actually, it was a royal pain and almost turned me off ebooks.
But then I gave it another shot, reading Twain's Huck Finn. Much better.
I agree with the original post- give it a try, it's enjoyable. But don't pick Les Miserables as your first ebook. Pick something shorter and lighter that doesn't require a lot of backpaging to figure out what's going on.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Agreed. Most of the popular books out there are available in one of the following formats: txt, rtf, pdf, html, or lit. You just have to know where to look
Personally, lit is pretty good (as long as you have a MS product to read it on), pdf is good and cross-platform friendly, and text works anywhere. :) Not that fond of html, since it makes books bulky (IMHO).
But that's just my $.02.
OTOH, she should fear piracy. The reason why more books aren't pirated is because most people don't know where to find them. Sad, but true. If people realized there was a large bookwarezing community, I'm guessing most would pirate. Sure, some would prefer the paperback copy, but not many. (I prefer both. For example, I might like a copy of "Linux in a Nutshell" by my computer desk at home, but a nice pdf file that I can keep on my laptop would be nice. Unfortunately, that book seems rare on the bookwarez sites, and I have no scanner, so I'm stuck with the unweildy dead tree edition.)
As I said above, just my $.02
The media middlemen, such as publishing firms, want to keep themselves firmly entrenched in a world where their middleman position is becoming less useful to the consumer. They're doing a good job of it so far. The technique they are using is to use patent and copyright to control not just the content, but the way in which you are allowed to view it. But they've got to give those of us who give a damn about fair use a reason to ignore our convictions and accept the middleman's control.
The way they seem to be doing it is to force their control over all new forms of technology, thus leaving those who care about fair use with the awful choice of "stay obsolete, or accept our control - your choice". E-books and DVDs are both doing this. Since the new technology is also the restrictive technology, when people start adapting the new technology because it's really cool and neat, they end up giving up their control unwittingly. Eventually the old technology stops being supported. Movies start being available ONLY on DVD and not on tape anymore. Books start being available ONLY on E-book and not on paper anymore. Soon even those who are willing to stick with old technology to avoid the hedgemony don't even have that option anymore. The choice becomes one of "accept the hedgemony, or totally forego every work of culture and entertainment being put out and stay out of the loop."
This sucks. What do I do about the upcoming 4-hour director's cut of Fellowship of the Ring on DVD? I want very much to have it, and I don't mind one bit giving the money in the form or royalyties to those who created it, and to New Line studio for having the guts to put their necks out on the line financing it. But how do I do this without simultaneously supporting their part in the engineered the DeCSS slander, er, I mean "trial"?
And that's just the way they want it. They want to make sure that I cannot seperate the two. And thus, an obsolete system of middlemen who aren't needed anymore in today's economy get job security by forcing me to pick between giving up on fair use, versus giving up on participation in modern culture.
And of course, as a side effect of this, open source software *also* has to give up on participation in modern culture, and I think that's what irks me the most, actually. I don't think the media execs are really interested one way or another in open source. But they are interested in preserving the hedgemony through content control, and as a side effect that ends up meaning there can't be open source methods to access the content they put out.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
E-books will never replace "real" books for me until the day I can have a "book" full of flexible paper-like pages that I can turn, and I can cause any of a number of texts to fill the pages. Ideally, the backlight of the "paper" should adjust itself to always keep a steady illumenation (dimming when you put it in normal light, brightening when you're in the dark).
Hey, anyone remember those little photocells they used to put in televisions to adjust the brightness? Why don't any current PDA's or laptops spend the extra 25 cents for one of those?
People are starting to make flexible LCD panels that act like paper, but they're still a long ways off and very expensive... certainly binding a couple hundred into a "book" would be insane for the moment.
Maybe in 20 years, I'll be able to have a handful of books on my shelves that contain (or download) all the texts that currently fill a room in my house, but I'm not holding my breath!
I can understand how publishing HP5 as an e-bok will attract attention to a somewhat ignored industry. However, my wife received all 4 HP books as a wedding present, which she absolutely loves. I couldn't image telling her that she can only read the latest version on an e-book. After spending at least $300US to buy a reader. I don't think that would revitalize the e-book industry, just alienate a loyal fanbase. Just my 2 cents. Cheers!