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Doctorow: Ebooks Neither E Nor Books
xanderwilson writes "Author Cory Doctorow has released his paper/speech for the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference this year into the public domain. A very interesting read about his experience with Magic Kingdom (which he is soon re-releasing under a more lenient Creative Commons license), the failure of e-books, and filesharing as a tool for creators."
I'm a regular Ebook purchaser, mainly PeanutPress which is now owned by Palm, but also a few for MS's book reader. I read them on my PC and on my PocketPC. It's quite a good Ebook reader platform, nice bright screen and fast paging. Marc
He runs a fairly popular blog at BoingBoing.net where you can read about his exploits at the ETCON conference.
Also, his book is actually titled Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. More information about his original release of the book, and re-release with the Creative Commons license can be read on his blog, and give good insight into what authors can expect when they release a book with a less restrictive license.
In 2001 my film archives and stock footage company partnered with the Internet Archive to put 1001 (ultimately 1800) of our most popular films online (http://www.archive.org/movies/prelinger.php) for free downloading and reuse. Until then we'd been extremely protective of these images. Since starting to give footage away, our stock footage sales are way up, our income increased, and people stop me on Valencia Street to thank me for making the archives available. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of producers have made cool and interesting work that would have been hard to make without free footage. Most don't have any money to spend, so they wouldn't have paid anyway. Others doing higher-profile work need written license agreements, so they can and do pay.
I'm convinced that the gift economy can generate returns. Cory is right.
The big problem with ebooks lies in the readers; devices capable of reading ebooks are bulky, fragile, expensive, and nominally not as easy on the eyes as paper; in addition, most of them are read-only, which means that you can't write notes in the margin or hilight passages for later use.
;)
Dude, 1999 called. It wants its information back.
Seriously. I've got a Zaurus. It weighs 7.1 ounces (comparable to a paperback), fits in my pocket (unlike a paperback), has 96KB of memory and a(n aftermarket) 512 MB SD card for the books. It's not a brick, but I've dropped it from four or five feet to wooden and carpeted floors too many times, and it's fine. It's true it's not as easy n the eyes as paper, but it's full (65,536) color and 320 x 240 with several anti-aliased fonts. It's not read only, in fact it has a thumb keyboard built in, and the ebook reader software (opie reader) allows annotations.
With the Wifi card plugged in, I can read ebooks on the net, on my PC (via samba mount) or copy them to the SD card. I'm currently reading Doctorow's latest, in fact.
Its battery life is a little low (4-6 hours), and it costs $400-$500. An alternative is a $100 Palm Pilot, with a longer battery life and a lower, black and white resolution; you can find after-market fonts for a Palm too. (I read books on a Handspring before I got the Zaurus).
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
While releasing his books under a creative commons license worked well for him I wonder what would happen if a normal (read unfamous) person attempted the same thing. Would a CC license help an unknown writer or hurt their chances of getting a book deal?
IIRC, Cory was relatively unknown prior to the publication of Down and Out. He was known within circles of SF readers, but not so much in the coveted "mainstream."
By doing this crazy thing and releasing his book -- for free! -- online, he made some very big waves in the publishing world, and people started paying attention to him. As a result, Down and Out sold tons of dead tree copies, and I think the downloads are into the millions.
When I tried my hand at publishing, I wondered the same thing. Sure, some people may have known me because of my acting work, or because of my weblog, but I didn't know if it would translate into mainstream sales. While I didn't offer Dancing Barefoot for free download, it was mostly online already, scattered across two years of weblog entries. When my book was first shipping, I would get e-mails from people who said "I just read your site, liked what I saw, and consequently bought your book." Sure, it's not the same as giving away the whole book, but I think it's similar.
All those people who bought it (over 3000 in just under four months) caught the attention of O'Reilly, and now I have a three book deal with them. None of that would have happened without the Internet, so I think a CC license will definately HELP an unknown writer.