Slashdot Mirror
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.
1. free books
2. ?
3. PROFIT!!!
In the Beginning was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson. If you haven't already read it, it's basicaly a history of operating systems and why they are how they are, intertwined with metaphors on how what parts work and a breakdown of OS/GUI variations and such. His stuff is way better than my explanation. It's free...so download it instead of listen to me ramble. If you hate it, the most you've lost is the time you took to DL and read what told you that. Also available in print.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I know lots of people who read both free and e-books.. but that's not why I haven't taken it on, and why I believe the market hasn't taken off either. Reading a book on the computer screen is the pits. Lots of technology has been promised to fix this, but where are the commercial products?
I glad to see free books are doing well, but I'm not going to read one.
Rob(ert) #3
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.
Bruce Eckel has all of his "Thinking in" books available in pdf format on his webpage. You can also buy the hardbound version in local bookstores. So you can have your cake and eat it too. It seems like he's pretty successful in his method, too.
I, personally, own a copy of Thinking in Java and Thinking in C++, and recommend it to all Java/C++ programmers. Check it out on the website, and buy a copy if you like it.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
From the article:
. 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. This has also been my own experience with my self-published physics textbooks. It's cheap marketing: readers can browse the digital book to see if it's something they want, and if they like it, they're willing to pay for the convenience of a printed copy.
Strangely, the author fails to link to the Baen Free Library: http://www.baen.com/library/
It's funny. Publishers are starting to get what Microsoft has known for a while. 'Piracy' is in reality free advertising. Why don't the record companies and movie studios get it?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I have to admit I take a certain joy in seeing that a whole book on fields is a mere 3 Meg download.
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
It would be nice if we also had something like free literary universes. I mean, you could write fiction which would add to an existing universe and its storylines. In the mentioned article, they touch the subject of open-source books. Although there's some intriguing thought there, I don't think the issue is taken broadly. It seems the original article doesn't focus in any specific book genre, but I think it's safe to assume it deals more specifically to reference books, not literary books. Any further thoughts on this?
My neighbor's
I really love the safari service at oreilly. You can basically check out 5 books for 10$ per month. Pretty nice, because I really love oreilly books, but couldn't afford to buy hard copies of them all. Unfortunately, the bastard company that runs this has a pretty crappy pricing model (automatic billing, and when you cancel your account, it is inactive immediately rather than at the end of the billing period).
Still, I think this is a good compromise, in the same way that if artists sold their cd's online for a reasonabele amount of money, people would be less tempted to pirate their respective work.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Eric Raymond's name is closely associated with the bazaar model, while Richard Stallman's evokes the cathedral
I appear to have made a vast mistake when reading and interpreting Mr. Raymond's work - it was my impression that his 'Cathedral' metaphor was used to describe closed, proprietary software design similar to Microsoft's, not Stallman's GPL'd design method. Was I wrong? Or is the author wrong?
Dr. Joseph Hairston
Superintendent, CCBC
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.
Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game) has posted a copy of his short story Angles for free on his website . He also wrote an interesting piece about copyright back in May of this year. An interesting quote:
He also routinely puts up the first few chapters of his books online, before they're published so you can get a taste of them before buying. I'm surprised more people don't have this attitude.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.
When they say they're free books, do they mean novel-length stories with real plots, or do they mean things like Seven-of-Nine/Highlander crossover fan-fiction?
Eckel gets it.
Here's more gratis books. Site 1 | Site 2 (Math)
Some people will be interested in BookCrossing.
From the site: "What is BookCrossing, you ask? It's a global book club that crosses time and space. It's a reading group that knows no geographical boundaries. Do you like free books? How about free book clubs?. Well, the books our members leave in the wild are free... but it's the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing. Book trading has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a book exchange of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind."
How to Download YouTube Videos
His Travels With Samantha was one of the first online free books ever, circa 1992-3. Later, he wrote the stupendous book on web publishing, Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing with his samoyed, Alex.
Two very good reads by a very good writer. Sorry, I know some people don't like Philip and this isn't flamebait -- I truly admire many of his initiatives, like the free Remindme and Clickthrough services, in addition to the remarkable photo.net which has grown enormous tentacles nowadays. Both books are intimately related to those efforts.
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.
Funny that no one has mentionned Project Gutenberg so far. If you don't know what they do, check it out here.
Well, I kinda with I had my $40, but I was glad in the end to have paid for it. Kudos to O'Reilly, Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet for doing it, like I need another reason to like O'Reilly. I hope examples like these will encourage others to do the same, after all, free software can be close to useless without documentation.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
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.
Yes, and that is the incentative!
It's frustrating seeing all these objections to the format. Much of the point of these free books is to get people hooked and get them to buy the real thing, right? Right?
It's not dead-tree _versus_ electronic. It's dead-tree _in addition to_ electronic. That's the key.
The electronic version; cheap, not as comfortable to read, good for searching/citing.
dead-tree version; expensive, very comfortable to read, not made for searching, looks good on shelf.
See how they complement each other?
I love the free books out there. I think it's brilliant. I've read Eckels material and I've recommended it to many many people based on the "check out the electronic version". I hope he's doing well.
The format issue notwithstanding, one great point is reader interaction and feedback. Publishing during the drafting period seems like a good way to get extra proofing and feedback, which makes for a better product, and better products sell more (music excepted :-o)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
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
I have the feeling that palm-held devices are becoming the most widely-used platforms for e-books, not computers with their monitors. Owning a Sony Clie, I have't read a paper-based book for over a year now. In fact, my eyes adjust to the small screen better than to printed books.
It's not much of a collection right now, but the quality level is high. Especially good is 'How to Think Like a Computer Scientist', a good introduction to programming that lives up to the title. It covers several languages.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
By getting this story to slashdot, I wonder how many additional books they will find. I don't really understand what the author is saying about open source software never replacing proprietary software and becoming #1 for a particular use. What about apache, perl, and a boatload of other best in class open source software apps?
I like having a physical book. I like being able to make marks on pages, put sticky notes on pages that I can feel on turn to, have the book in my hand, take it where I want to and it never needs electricty.
Sure, some people may like it. But that's why a free market is so great. You can use what you like. I also learned in a technical writing class that reading from a computer screen is 25% slower than reading from a book. My own experience tells me this is true as well.
I am totally unsurprised that the non-free eBook market is languishing. The other day I go to Amazon to look for a new book. The hardcover edition was on sale for $18. The digital eBook was $21. This kind of greed (eBooks are arguably less expensive to distribute and have almost no chance of being re-read in a secondary market) is why the established publishers are in for a hard lesson in reality. Same goes with music, etc, etc...
The Assayer appears to be partially slashdotted right now. It's still serving up static HTML, but it won't let you use any of the CGIs, so you can't browse the database, read reviews, sign on as a member, or write reviews right now. That's a shame, since I ended the article with a plea for reviews! I hope people will try back later when the server is able to handle the load. Lots of people have already posted here on Slashdot about their favorite free books, and it would be great if they could put reviews on The Assayer eventually.
Find free books.
So how's that affecting Dover's business (Dover produces no new titles, apart from original translations of non-copyrighted work)? They're booming.
Heck, with those sort of results, Dover ought to be providing financial support for PG (or at least releasing edited/translated titles into the public domain). Though I guess I'll settle for that nice brief they filed in Eldred's behalf.
Slight disclaimer here, Dover was bought by a big printing company that's really helped them with distribution (just came back from the beach and all the little bookstores there were well-stocked with Dover thrifts), but every other publisher on the planet has seen sales fall, while Dover's sales, since the acquisition, have grown tremendously.
A great place for free book is over at www.andamooka.org
It has some great books there, although some may be outdated
Hey, this is my sig, if you don't like it, STOP READING MY POSTS!
at least two of [these free books] [4],[5] seem to be the standard textbooks in their field today
Reference 4 is by no means the standard textbook in the field of biophysics. I've been in the field for at least 6 years and this is the first I've heard of this book. None of my professors have ever mentioned it either.
Microsoft can't just say, "Romeo and Juliet was a big success for Shakespeare, so we'll write something similar."
Doesn't this happen all the time? Isn't West Side Story just Romeo and Juliet again? Isn't any star-crossed lover movie that women flock and drag their men to a remake of Romeo and Juliet? Wasn't the Leonardo DiCrapio remake an embraced and extended version of R&J?
Books, however, are easy to use, and most computer users know how to use an electronic book that is in the ubiquitous (and nonproprietary) Adobe Acrobat format.
Isn't pdf proprietary?
Finally, a story on free literature that doesn't link the asstr is not complete by any means :)
Well, it's not entirely true that community writing doesn't pan out. The author mentions Nupedia as a failed effort, but there are many examples of places where this kind of "group writing" has worked very well.
The best I can think of is Everything. I spend many hours reading the stuff there every week. Though it cannot be called an encyclopedia by any stretch of imagination, I've found it to be a very valuable source of general contemporary info.
Then there's the Encyclopedia Mythica.
Someone just mentioned Project Gutenberg too. It's a community effort that's coming out very well indeed. I know that it's not not community authorship, but a community effort.
There are many more counter-examples I can provide. Hell, even the usenet archives are a very useful source of info sometimes.
Community writing should not be written off (pardon the pun) lightly.
All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.
That chapter is a lot out of date w/ regards to the flexability and openess of Darwin and Mac OS X.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It seems to me that most of the free books mentioned on this thread are sci-fi, and popular fiction. It is by virtue of this fact that these dispersion methods for books have not caught on more. The more popular the book, the more likely one is to charge for it. Perhaps we ought to start organizing things in the public domain, and things like classics, technical works, etc, that are more likely to be thought of as "free". Make these books accessible, and create a good interface, to show proof of concept in terms of readers and the bigger guys may come around, at least to publishing on and off-line works (the online versions being free or very cheap). Here are my links to some stellar classics archives. Aside from some of the more obscure math and science works, I believe my whole school's curriculum is available for free on the web:
Perseus Project
Great Books Index
The Internet Classics Archive
Bartleby
Enjoy these free reads. They are the greatest books ever written.
"Looming on the horizon instead, with every prospect of success, were the "anti-books:" electronic books encumbered with {odious licensing terms} and {restrictive digital rights management technology.[2]} You wouldn't be able to loan such a book to a friend, public libraries couldn't acquire it, and if you stopped paying your rental fee, it would expire and become unreadable! "
That sounds exactly like Safari (which I am currently a member of). The {} may or may not apply. The only digital rights management there exists is that which will make it very inconvenient to say print the entire book out. I believe Safari is a success and does not include only O'Reilly books. It is a lot cheaper than buying a book, for access to a few.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
was written by Rick Cook.
:)
Wizard's Bane, Compiled, and Cursed are all available online.
They're stories about a normal guy who is transported using magic to a fantasy world where he's the man because he's an excellent programmer.
Mix of my favorite genre's - fantasy and computers. He brings up TLAs (three letter acronyms), R2D2, the power of caffiene, the dragon book (for compiler writers), a spell called "hello world," emacs, and a lot of other funny stuff I can't remember. And it all seems to fit (not just puns thrown in there for their own sake, like the often-criticized Xanth books).
Now I REALLY want to go buy the next three.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
did is strike anyone else as ironic that one of the mentioned websites, theassayer.org, which said it had more than 350 free books on it's site, is not accessable by public?
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
I found this awhile back by linking back from a Google search. I was pleasantly surprised to a) learn of its existence and b) find it being offered for free. For those of you into tales of hacking/cracking this is a good read that keeps me 'scared whitehat'. http://www.underground-book.com/ It's strange how much is out there out there in terms of free literature and documentation, but the only unified, exhaustive index is Google. :P
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
Free books are a good idea, but will face the same struggle as OSS, primarily because of the monopolies already existing. MS we all know about, but how many of you good people here tonight know the extent of the Bertelsmann firm's media dominance? It's the only Big Six corp not to have a key US TV outlet, and that (AFAIK) is because the US has laws to make sure all US TV is by American corporations, and Bertelsmann is German.
To cut a long story short, the Big Corps will do anything and everything to wipe out "free books", or at the very least, prevent their gaining a significant market share. In terms of styles of books, the mass markets will be catered for, so free books will fill the unprofitable/undesirable topics that publishers will not touch. They will also be quite a few people releasing books for free as a statement, like the morons who struggle to use Linux just because its "cool", aparrently. Finally, the genuineley intelligent books whose authors really are in it for the spirit of it, the virtually unread minority, drowned under the crapflooders whose crap has no profit for the big publishing houses and no worth to the independent publishers.
In short, this could, and hopefully will, be a force for good in the literature arena. Until the lawyers move in...
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
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.)
I dunno about the rest of you, but I wasn't going to buy a rocketbook or any of the others so that I could pay a bunch of money to download books over a slow-as-molasses modem. Why the heck can't I download them over my broadband connection to my PC and maintain my own library? And I wasn't going to buy books that I could only read on my PC, which I don't happen to be sitting in front of at any time when I want to be reading books.
I want to read books wherever I am, like you'd be able to do with a dedicated ebook reader, but I don't want to pay for or carry around a dedicated ebook reader.
As it turns out, I've been carrying a portable computer since early 1997 - a palm. So why not use that? The screen is small, but I always have it with me, and its print is really not all that much smaller than a lot of paperbacks anyway.
I thought that was a natural fit. I started reading ebooks on it in I think 1998, but certainly by the end of 1999. Back then there were only a few places you could get them, and peanutpress was the only place I could get contemporary stuff from well-known authors (plus the peanut reader did a very nice display job given the limitations of the device).
Since that time the number of ebook vendors has exploded. I still can't get them from Barnes and Noble or Amazon in a palm reader format (isn't it interesting that both support Microsoft's format but neither supports the much more popular palm reader format) but there has been an explosion of free and commercial ebook services serving the palmtop market. My current favorite is fictionwise.
Anyway, my point in all of this is that ebooks are selling commercially and have been selling for years. Not on high volumes, but I wonder if that's not because of the failure of the large booksellers to target the largest of the palmtop markets. The smaller vendors have existed for years and are obviously doing something right given that they're still around and their inventories are exploding, but they don't have the marketing push to really get ebooks out there.
Whatever, ebooks really are here if you want them and most likely you don't have to buy anything extra to read them.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
For example, I wanted to quote that great pseudo-riddle from Lewis Carroll -- "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" But which Alice book did it come from? In two minutes I found both text files at Gutenberg, searched for "raven", and there it was. (The Mad Hatter came up with it, in _Alice in Wonderland_. )
The Internet is, IMO, the best free ebook--it sure is the biggest. Unlike dead tree books, you get a wide choice of search engines. Of course, you can pick up a lot of weird stuff there too. So, surf safely--I myself always wear a condom.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
Funny that no one has mentionned Project Gutenberg so far.
Project Gutenberg, unfortunately, has had its hands tied by the late Sen. Sonny "Watch out for that tree" Bono.
Or are you so sure that Eldred will win?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I claim DRM will fail for similar reasons to 'anti-books' as they are called. If what they do (with DRM) to a CD or DVD to make it uncopyable, and usable on exactly one computer also makes it less usable on standard audio and video hardware, I think they could lose it all very quickly. As long as the average consumer can use the media he bought in any number of players (including old ones), they have a chance of selling them. But if DRM means you lose the right of first sale property, which includes the right to lend the media to a friend and such, the average joe will quickly reject this junk.
There is also a growing number of people that won't buy it unless they retain basic fair use copying rights. I'm one of them, as are a lot of people on slashdot. I don't have any MP3 or Ogg devices yet, but I'm likely to convert my entire music collection to this type of system in the next five years (give or take). I'm quite confident that there will be enough material that doesn't have these ridiculous restrictions that I won't feel I'm missing anything, and frankly if an artist lets their work get released in this way, I don't need them.
It is times like these that I rejoice to the sounds of failure. Corporations and your typical money making "joe" make it hard these days to separate superficial monkey bait from superb works of literary merit. Much like this man.
Fanfic is borderline-legal, but is almost always written by the most hardcore fans of the (show|books|comics)---no creator is going to alienate their biggest fans. Legal action has only been undertaken when the fic's author sought to profit from their use of the copyrighted universe---in this way, all fic works must be de facto free. Nifty, eh?
See The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek and so on for examples.
Actually, I'll start you off with my favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic. (Sex and violence the way it should be!) Read [skin]. Googling for "fanfic" and the name of your favorite series should produce good results. Most of it is dreck, but there's a lot of good stuff in there too.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
For the MPAA, I think it is different as the barriers to entry are pretty high for motion pictures. They don't like their own DVD products cutting into theature box office, so maybe they really are more concerned with piracy. At current bandwidth, I'd be surprised if P2P style exchanges are really that big of a problem for them, but mass produced grey market sales of actual discs probably is. They should be able to attack this problem without pissing off customers with restrictive DRM, but they seem to be heading down the wrong path.
Is that you're computer screen has very crappy resolution compared to the resolution on a piece of paper. When computer screen's are 300dpi like decent printers, then reading stuff on them will be much more fun.
Until then, the thing to do is offer books in pdf and html format. PDF to print out. HTML to read on the computer, which will allow you to change font settings and sizes to your preference, making it easier to read.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
It was called a culture's mythology.
I guess we still have it in a way, but it's all been fenced in.
DNA just wants to be free...
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
There has been some experimentation with collaborative fiction, but I suspect it is rare that it gains any traction. The example in the sibling comment of 'fanfic' is probably most workable because there is an existing 'created world' to establish a framework and characters, etc. I would say this type of thing is completely different and has different motivations than what drives authors to create original fiction. Software is naturally a more collaborative process. Design in general is; maybe it is that complexity requires many minds.
The surprise success story is free books." Of course, this defines "success" as number of readers, not in terms of monetary profits.
I wish amazon defined success this way, then I would only have to pay shipping to support my crack-like book collecting habit (at least until amazon went out of business).
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
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.
Even with CD's which yield perfect copies so easily, you still get more than just the music in a high quality format - you get the liner notes (often with lyrics or cool art) and in any case support the artist.
And with movies, sure you can download a divx but then you miss out on a lot of extra stuff that makes DVD's so great. Even if you download a straight rip of a DVD you probably are not getting the extra discs, as why would anyone put them up? I think extra DVD's are a great way to combat piracy, they more discs thre are the less likley all of them will be availiable for DL and thus if you really like the movie you'll probably buy the DVD.
Even with downloading copies of things, DVD and CD sales are still great so obviosuly people see some value in the physical medium.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I was reading an E-Book on the PC and it was like beeeeep beep beep beep beep beeeep! And then like half of my book was gone, and I was like unnnhhh...? It devoured my book.
It was a really good book.
And then I had to download it again and I had to do it fast so it wasn't as good.
It's kind of...
a bummer.
Note to moderators: It's Funny, not off-topic.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Two years ago, the idea of a free book --- a book whose author had intentionally made it free on the internet --- was largely unknown and untested.
My arse it was largely unknown and untested. If that's your first sentence I'm not going to bother read the rest. BTW, Bruce Eckel has an interesting note about this at http://www.mindview.net/Etc/FAQ.html#BooksOnWeb
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
Raymond described a model of collaborative software development in which a large, geographically dispersed group of programmers worked together in a seemingly chaotic way. This bazaar model was to be contrasted with the cathedral model, in which everything is done according to a detailed, preexisting plan.
[...]
The bazaar model seems to have been almost a complete failure in the world of free books, although not for want of trying. Tellingly, The Cathedral and the Bazaar was itself written cathedral-style by Raymond. He has also started a bazaar-style book project, The Art of Unix Programming[7], which appears to be languishing.
[...]
The failure of the bazaar model with free books might not seem surprising
This depends largely on where one draws the line between bizzar and cathedral, or put another way, with what granularity one considers a project or body of work. The Star Trek and Star Wars universes are examples where there is a large body of Cathedralesque work, as well as an even larger body of "fan fiction." While many stories (perhaps most) are themselves written by a single author (as, in fact, my own (soon-to-be released under a free license) novel has been), the overall, net effect of the body of work which comprises the fan fiction of the Star Trek and Star Wars universes (and undoubtably other settings as well) is in many ways more remeniscent of the Bizzar than a Cathedral approach. The Linux kernel is a bizzar-type project, yet within that kernel are modules and subsystems that are quite 'cathedralesque' in how they were managed and written.
The definition in many ways becomeds one of granularity, and while I agree with much the article writes, I think the author overlooks the bizzar aspect of the cultural commons from which all authors draw inspiration. This is readilly seen in the collections of fan fiction which abound and, were it not for the often extremely repressive aspects of copyright in limiting how and when a person can incorporate another's work in their own project (no, I'm not advocating plagerism, I'm advocating broader definitions of fair use that including giving the original creator credit for their contribution, if not exclusive use).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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
One of the things I have always appreciated about the Free Software community is the way help of all kinds is given (to those seen as deserving!) freely.
My perception of the way books are normally written is very close to my perception of how proprietary software is developed. In secret, with help only from those with a financial interest in the book.
I'm in the process of writing my first book, which I intend to distribute under the FDL.
So, my actual question is, does anybody know of a mailing list or other "support group" for (aspiring) Free Book authors?
-Peter
The problem is that though ClearType looks great subjectively it gives me a massive headache on my 17" ViewSonic VA800 LCD screen if I leave it on for a day or two of heavy computer use, even after I "tuned" it. I haven't set it up on a PDA and tried reading a Gutentext or other ebook because of that (well, and cuz I got rid of my PocketPC device and am back to a Clie for now... doh).
Luckily there are still some immediate options if you are one of the many who *know* about Project Gutenberg etexts (for those of us whose taste in books, e- and otherwise is somewhat antiquated) but have never actually *read* one due to their well, umm, rather plain text look and feel. In particular GutenMark should do the trick. So download a couple of GutenTexts and GutenMark them into PDF/PS and you have something you might not exactly be able to curl up with, but at least it's readable.
Nod, I've been looking through it but haven't made a detailed study of the new interface...
Thanks for bringing this point up, it's well worth mentioning.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Anyhow, reading on the iPaq is very pleasant in many ways; nice screen contrast, high quality ClearType fonts, ability to look up works in the dictionary easily, and so forth. However, it can be physically fatiquing on the hands, because of the need to push the button to change pages. The requires a relatively large amount of force, in a fairly awkward manner, as compared to reaching over your other hand, and flipping a thin piece of paper. And because each virtual page holds less, you do it more.
I think that once some of the more subtle ergonmic issues are taken care of, the selection of titles is greater, and Pocket PC-style devices are much cheaper (Palm devices still aren't up to the quality of MS Reader), you'll see it become a far more common and preferred way to read.
Nothing beats carrying a dozen virtual books around with you, in addition to your calendar, todo list, some games, and so on. Makes waiting in long lines, waiting at the doctor, far less annoying.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Have you read any sword and sorcery books? The characters are SUPPOSED to be cardboard cutouts. That's the genre. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Its not a romance novel - its the literary equivalent of a Conan movie (or Conan book, for that matter). You know - something that should be consumable by someone with a sixth grade reading level and with a plot which is merely a twist around a single (sometimes two, if they really push it) major idea.
I was overjoyed to find a book in this genre that could actually appeal to programmers.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
When I mirrored Project Gutenberg, I litterally gave away thousands of books, mostly to eastern Europe. I don't have exact numbers in my head anymore, but it was in the 100s of K downloads (number of files). Personally, I have read many books published by project gutenberg on my PalmIIIx on trains and airplanes.
The biggest Threat to Project Gutenberg is the extension of copyright laws. A lot of famous and interesting works ought to be copyright-free by now, but the constant extensions to copyright laws prevent them from entering the public domain. This is really a pity.Useable (used) PCs can be had for as little as $30. Combined with free software and free books, this could be a great tool for underpriviliged people and countries to "catch up" a little.
We need more free information, damnit.
"Sonny Bono is dead." -- Project Gutenberg
"Project Gutenberg is still dead." -- Mary Bono, executor of Sonny Bono's estate
Will I retire or break 10K?
Step one: go to audible.com and get books.
Step two: get one of those little thingies that plugs into the headphone out, and transmits on a radio frequency.
Step three: profit!!
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.