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Free Books: Under the Radar
bcrowell writes "Remember e-books, anti-books, and print-on-demand books? They didn't pan out. The surprise success story is free books." Of course, this defines "success" as number of readers, not in terms of monetary profits. E-books and their ilk were concentrating on the latter definition, rather than the former. Still, it's good to see free books preferred in some circles based on their merit, and not just the cost.
It would be a great thing if teachers could entice children to take advantage of these free books to extend literacy. This could also possibly show the benefits of shortening the copyrights that keep getting extended by allowing educational institutions distribute the content and reduce overhead costs at the same time.
Part of the problem with digital books wasn't just the price, but the format on-screen. Most people (i.e. the general public) won't sit and read from a computer screen for the length of time to read a book. Now, surfing for pron or killin' aliens is a different matter...
LETS DECOMPOSE & ENJOY ASSEMBLING
But as you can see, this can be clearly done without DRM as well. Plus this doesn't benefit the (dare i say it) Cartels that force crappy overpriced music on dumb masses like DRM would...Idealism is nice, but it doesn't work if its easily exploited by those who are already in power.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
It's great that with the Internet, it's gotten easier to self-publish your own works. Just like web pages, free books are a way for anybody to get the point out to the general public. However, now that anybody is allowed to do this, now the general public has figure out the difference between the good and the bad.
As far as e-books go, they've been promising that we'll have everything on microfiche since the 60's, and that the book is dead. Until I can read a book online and be able to find a subject quickly by "thumbing" though the book, there will always be room for paper books.
ebooks will work as soon as there are viable, usable devices for everyone to read them on.
Pdas at $500 with tiny screens to read on won't do. Sure there are pluses to them, reading in total darkness is cool, it makes you more "attuned" to what you are reading (less distractions around for your eyes to wander). But they are not for everyone. And reading them on your large computer screen sucks for various reasons, posture is not inteneded for reading for one. ITs ok for manuals and on line help, beacuse you are using the program at the same time, but -at lest for me- ebooks? nah.
Free ebooks are another thing altogether. You download them cos they're free, and to "build up" an elibrary, it doesn't mean you actually read them all. Eg: I d/l all Verne's books and only reread 2000 leagues, and Journey, I have a jornada i use almost solely as a contacts and ebook reader.
'Piracy' is in reality free advertising. Why don't the record companies and movie studios get it?
Probably because there is nothing to be gained by buying a copy of movie or a song after pirating it, whereas for software you buy it for upgrades or tech support and for books you buy it so that you can hold it in your hands instead of reading on the computer screen. If the record and movie companies provided free low quality copies of their works, they might be able to use this to get people to buy them in high quality formats. But, as it stands now, the quality of a downloaded song or movie is good enough that people don't seem to think its worth buying it for the quality increase.
a staple on my PDA ever since I acquired it. No it is not convenient to read in that format but it is very handy to have a dozen or so books on my Handspring, especially while traveling. I will certainly embrace the addition of newer titles- most of what has been availble until mow has been Project Gutenberg/public domain stuff.
When I pick up a book, it is to escape from staring at the monitor all day. I like to kick back with a nice hot cup of tea and one of my cats in my lap & relax, which somehow isn't possible even with my comfy computer setup.
While I have never depended on a "publisher to make an editorial decision," I do depend on my friends & get most of my recommendations from folks who only turn on a PC to check e-mail. This resulted in my dropping over $100 yesterday, alone on stuff such as Dylan Thomas, Bukowski, Pratchett, Le Guin, Naipail, and Hardy. Many of these are copyrighted classics that won't be available online for another 75+ years and all are well worth paying $7-35 for a lifetime of enjoyment. Yes, they'll sit on my shelf and represent killed trees, but the electricity required to power my PC long enough was probably generated with coal that will shorten the lives of even more trees and people as well. My library, on the other hand, is passed around to all my interested friends and family, a warm, physical, and comforting way to share enjoyment of the greatest poetry and prose. As with all great electronic innovations, "free" online books bypass the enjoyable interpersonal element, be it of sharing a story or chatting with the librarian.
Yes, there could be some great literature online & maybe someday I'll find something work getting a headache to read. For now, however, I'm content with a system that ain't broke; the bookstore when I've got the money and the library when I don't.
This is really the point of the article. Restricted license e-books don't let you go down to the printer's and make a dead tree copy; free books do.
Probably because there is nothing to be gained by buying a copy of movie or a song after pirating it, whereas for software you buy it for upgrades or tech support and for books you buy it so that you can hold it in your hands instead of reading on the computer screen.
By this same logic, most people who can download books can print them pretty cheaply if they don't use a laser printer. Upgrades can be just as easily pirated as original software.
You're right about the tech support thing about software. You don't get a nice cover or dust jacket with a downloaded book, either, and have to keep it bound in notebook.
By the same token, if you downloaded 'Lord of the Rings' on the internet, you didn't get extras like trailers, directors' comments, animated interactive menus, mini-posters, etc... When you buy a CD you get a lot of the same stuff. CD's are a bad example, though, because the Music industry is trying as hard as it can to give as little to their customers as they can get away with.
For a better example, when the Hellsing anime was released in Japan, I downloaded fansubs of the show online. When it was released in the U.S., I bought the DVD. Inside the Vol2. DVD, I got a cool miniposter of Alucard and Cellas, a post card, and a really neat Hellsign sew-on/iron-on patch.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
For all the open-source software movement's successes, I'm not aware of any case in which an entrenched proprietary program was pushed out of first place in the market by open-source software.
Linux was in 1999 (I don't know how it is today) the most widely used server operating system on the internet.
Apache is the top web server.
PHP has surpassed ASP in terms of number of users and is now the most widely used server side scripting language.
Sendmail is the leading email server (over, for example, Microsoft Exchange).
OpenSSH is the Internet's most widely used implementation of SSH.
Granted, some of these may never have pushed anything other than other OSS/FS products out of first place (such as Apache, whose predecessor was the NCSA web server), but aren't there a gazillion other examples anyway? I have a hard time taking anyone who makes such bold assertions, without even trying to first evaluate them, seriously.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
People always seem to be at their best when in small groups. The internet has the positive affect of cutting out the middleman and in some cases, perhaps slows down globalization (sometimes a good thing, but usually not - globalization tends to hurt people in developing countries who have the least).
It is a great feeling to publish a real physical book, but I have found that I have had to make at least two compromises with the traditional publishing process, mainly:
- constrained to write about popular subjects
- books that get out of date technologically are still sold (for many of my published books, I really liked them when they were fresh, but 4 or 5 years later, they seemed really dated, but were still being sold)
Anyway, when writing free web books, an author (like me!) can choose topics that are interesting but niche. I beg for small donations for my free web books, and I am pleasantly surprised at the amount of donations that I receive (currently, I get 3 or 4 cents per download, on the average, in donations).I am working on a third free web book (The Software Design Book), so I do believe in this process.
-Mark
Book publishers like Baen and O'Reilly, however, have found that they can increase sales of their printed books by giving away the digital versions for free... 'Piracy' is in reality free advertising. Why don't the record companies and movie studios get it?
.cda to .mp3.
Well, there is a difference between reading and audio. People don't want to get monitor eyestrain from pleasure reading, and a printed book is usually quite portable. Putting a book out for free will entice a user to purchase the physical copy, for the aforementioned benefits, whereas the same cannot be said for MP3s, which suffer little loss in fidelity or functionality in the trip from
Personally, I still wouldn't give the whole book away, I'd pull an Orson Scott Cardand post the first three chapters online to hook in readers.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
I wouldn't like to try reading some Joyce or Camus -- with multi-page paragraphs and run-on sentences that go for ever -- on the tiny, lo-res screens of a PDA.
Da Blog
Heh, the original article certainly had a LOT to chew on with respect to Raymond, failure of Nupedia (did it fail?), Stallman, etc.
:) Construction by committee often doesn't yield very artistic results. etc.
The GPL is not a design method it is license. How one actually develops the project might be the author's point. Closed shop development can produce a GPL'd product. Also, it might just be the notion of control of a project - is it rigid (hierarchical) or flexible (very flat).
I got the feeling that the author is pointing out how an INDIVIDUAL can produce a great product (like his textbooks) if he has access to royalty-free information that he can use in his own work.
Note how the author points out Raymond's use of the cathedral approach to write his popular book. Essentially that was Raymond ALONE producing a work. Likewise, Stallman with EMACS - on his own but using other's work as well.
Look at this quote:
"The failure of the bazaar model with free books might not seem surprising, since to most people it sounds like the silly party game where each person takes a turn adding more onto a story. We normally assume that an author has a unique voice, and that authorship can't be delegated."
I really think his point is that lots of people editing, revising, adding chapters, fixing, etc. doesn't apply as well to books...except in the case of technical documentation.
For example, an author who has a particular teaching method and writing style that he wants to consistently use across chapters will not (and should not) be open to others messing with his text outside of the purely technical side of things. The end result though can be something that is free for all to change, edit, etc.
I like the author's approach because creativity usually means the artist/author/etc. realizes his own ideas in the form of the project. Projects that are not purely technical may not be best done with bazaar like methods. Too many chefs spoil the broth
Basically, realize your own project goals and then allow others to benefit as they want from them.
That chapter is a lot out of date w/ regards to the flexability and openess of Darwin and Mac OS X.
To quote ESR's paper:I don't see how this can possibly be interpreted as Proprietary == Cathedral. There are plenty of other hints that it's Linux == Bazaar, GNU == Cathedral.
Probably most proprietary software is also cathedral, simply due to small number of developers with eyes on the code, but there are organisations which have large enough development teams that they could possibly run a project bazaar-style without opening it up outside the organisation.
The main problem with free (as in speech) universes is that someone had to labor to produce it - they had to have the inspiration to come up with it. Simply writing a line, and handing it to the next person is NOT what I believe this person had in mind.
Many writers feel very passionately about their settings, their characters, and their hard work. As an unpublished writer, I cringe every time people come up with an non-cannonical version of this, that, or the other thing - totally ruining the vision of characters, places, and events simply because the author didn't take the time to do his research.
With that said, however - the concept (if you could make it work, and enforce integrity) of free universes is appealing in that the story, and your characters live on after either you have died, or have moved on to other things.
1. Go to Slashdot and post incredibly overused joke, slightly modified to fit the posted story.
2. Retarded moderators mod up comment as funny.
3. ???
4. Profit!
I like safari as well, but unlike you I actually have most of the books that they make available...
It's nice to see the new books come out and decide if I want to get them... But mainly I use the service as a reference... I can access the site anywhere, so if I am on a customer's site and need to look up something, it's pretty easy to jump in..
I keep several slots free just for this reason, I can pick whatever book I need at the time.
Good service, though I would like a bit better user interface.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
I understand tech books, but for the types of books you read once...novels, fiction, that sort of thing, the paperback book is a thing of beauty.
It fits comfortably in hand, requires no power, can be stored in a large pocket or small backpack, and its cheap enough that if it gets lots, you don't care, I can loan it to my friends if I want, I can throw it away, I can store it on a shelf, virtually indestructable, theft resistant and it requires no electricity to use. I can even use it in the hot tub or swimming pool, and it if gets wet, well, when you dry it out, it usually pretty usable. Its perfect packaging for the human animal.
So if I have a reader for my ebook, I'm getting a fragile device that will have DRM built into it, will require electricity, and will be difficult to read.
Rather than try to improve one of the perfect human inventions (the paperback book), why not work on something useful like a good, cheap DVD player for linux?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I have known authors of niche type books and have learned from them that they make exceptionally small amounts of money on the sale of these books. Specifically, I am talking about the PhD candidate who turns his thesis over to a publisher. Here's an example of this: The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1994. This was a book written by my professor.
Getting back to my point, though, I believe that he would probably make more money today posting that entire book on the web for free and putting up a paypal tip jar than he would by going through a publisher or attempting subsidy publishing.
There are a lot of content sites out there using this method and, when you cut out the agent, the publisher, the printer, the retailer, and all the other middlemen, direct sales based on paypal type donations might be the way to go (please spare me on the evils of paypal, you know I mean the concept of micropayments.)
For a similar set of reasons as to why the public rejected the divx "loaning scheme" for movies, they'll reject e-books as they currently stand.
People would always rather get something for free than have to pay for it; and they'd always rather have the rights laid out according to the FSF than not have those rights.
But people will pay for books. We've been doing that forever, since the beginning of this nation. But when people pay for books, they expect certain rights; the right to read as often as they like, to loan, to mark-up, to give away, to take quotes from, to put in a library, etc. Until e-books give people all the same rights they have with regular paper-back books, they will not catch on.
Asking people to buy e-books as they currently exist is like saying "why don't you pay me 30,000 dollars for the same Ford except that you can't loan it to anyone, modify it, etc etc". People aren't going to buy into this bullshit.
What should happen is that when we buy a paper-back book, we should get access to an e-book automatically, and have the same rights to utilize the e-book as we would the paper-back book.
The reason why free-books online are catching on is because they offer the consumers all the same rights they'd have with paper-back books.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
As an avid reader I have been getting free books for years... from the public library. Seriously, there are plenty of good books to be found there and it wont cost you a penny. And for the newer stuff I can always drop in to barnes and nobles and either return it or make a nice library donation and write it off in taxes.
In recent years, I've fed my kids through the work I attract via my contributions to open source and the publication of free software on my web site. It is possible to make a living from free software.
I hope to use a similar model for a fantasy novel I'm writing.
The novel in question was first completed some years back, tentatively sold to a big name publisher, and then "lost" in a series of mergers. Quite discouraging. Writing is a damned tough business; I know, because I made a living for twelve years with magazine columns and programming books.
I write fiction for two reasons -- because I enjoy it, and to entertain people. But getting into the fiction market (as in making money) is very, very hard. The publishing industry is terribly conservative and biased in the most incredible ways.
Success as a writer -- especially as a fiction writer -- is elusive. Lost in a sea of lousy over-the-transom manuscripts, agents, and myopic publishers, how does an author stand out and make themselves known?
Well, I'm told that John Grisham started his career by self-publishing his first books, and selling them from the trunk of his car at fairs and flea markets. Self-promotion is the root of all success...
And perhaps people will pay me directly, if they believe my book worthy.
So I'm publishing a book in a few weeks via my website, complete with full-color plates (artwork by my talented wife), and a story written exactly the way I want it, without the interference (or grammatical safety net!) of an editor. The complete book will be available under exactly the same terms as a paper book -- you can give it away, make copies for your friends, or print it out, all without paying me a dime.
BUT, I'll also have a honor-based online payment system; for less than the cost of a typical paperback, people who enjoy the book can pay for it. They are not required to pay me -- it is a matter of honor and ethics.
I don't expect most people to pay for what they download; if they simply enjoy the book, pass it on to friends, read it to their kids -- that will be victory (in a different sense.) What I'm giving people is an honest chance to compensate me, the author, for my work, if they deem it worthy.
How many times have you bought a paperback, found it unreadable, and put it on the shelf unfinished or dissatisfied? How often does a pretty cover conceal a lousy book? It happens often enough for me, especially when buying a new science fiction or fantasy book. Wouldn't it be better if you could read the book first, and then only pay the authors whose work you considered worthy?
Perhaps I'm too optimistic about people; if nothing else, this will be an interesting experiment in publishing and human relations.
All about me
Interesting read, (blah blah blah)
Did you actually read it, or did you just skim through? It seems as if you read the beginning and the ending, missing everything in between.
What you say he wrote is false. He doesn't think a cool operating system is an end in itself, nor does he say that absolute control of a program is the dominent goal. You imply that he failed to see that most people just want to get the work done, whereas it is his whole point all along. You portray him as someone who has made one definitive choice, which is wrong - at the time of writing, it seems he was using Linux, Windows NT and BeOS, having abandoned Macs a few years before.
Folks have different goals, and contrary to what you say, he sees that very well. I now wonder what your goal is? Are you genuinely mislead by a quick skim, or are you a most subtle troller? The only valid point you make, and which I repeat here is was worth reading. Very true.
To me, the natural progression for a publisher in an arena where selling dead-tree print has ended is in picking the diamonds from the rough as it were. There are almost as many would-be writers as readers out there, and most of them are awful. Lots of books that get published are awful, and a lot more meritless manuscripts are thrown out every year (along with some good manuscripts that never get published).
Still, there remains the task of:
1) Identifying good writing.
2) Promoting the authors who produce good work.
3) Promoting specific titles from authors who produce good work.
4) Editing! Even good authors spend a lot of time going back and forth with their editors.
5) Story art etc.
So there is always going to be work for the publishing houses. What remains to be seen is how digital distribution will be managed without bankrupting the existing companies. And if they are bankrupted, what will evolve to fill these roles?
Its possible someone will develop a site like epinions or slashdot except for writing, with a moderation / meta moderation system and so on. But I think the same issues that take place on slashdot will evolve - most 'moderators' will spend most of their time only reading stories/books that have already been modded up and there will be a huge collection of mostly unsorted stories/books. Most of which will be garbage but in which plenty of gems will be overlooked.
I have about 100 linear feet of computer-related books. I also have probably a third of them in some e-format. 9 times out of 10, I find myself consulting the hardcopy, because it's a helluva lot easier to see what I'm trying to do/fix onscreen when there's not an ebook in my way, and because it's a lot easier to flip back and forth between bookmarked items in the hardcopy.
Tho an ebook is more useful than hardcopy when I'm trying to find some term that's not in the index, or when I need to clip a passage to quote to someone else.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Three chapters might be enough for Orson Scott Card, who already has a fairly large following, but it certainly isn't enough for authors that are less well known. Besides, why be stingy? If you aren't going to put the whole book up on the Internet what does it hurt to put nearly all of the book on the Internet? You still have to buy the book to find out how it ends, and no one is likely to read 80% of a book and then not finish it.
The folks at Baen aren't stupid. Most sci-fi/fantasy novels nowadays are actually part of a series, and Baen isn't giving away any series in its entirety. I have bought several books from them from authors I had never heard of because I liked the books I was able to read for free.
I actually prefer reading on my Visor, and I refuse to buy encrypted ebooks, and that means that baen.com and fictionwise.com are getting the lion's share of my book dollars.