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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."
Looks fine to me. It's a plain-text file. If you don't like the way it wraps and such in your browser, maybe you should try using a proper text editor to view it.
As the important part of the document is the content, there's no need for it to be in HTML. It is a speech, after all, and not a press release.
To say that releasing under the Creative Commons is less restricive is certainly disingenuous. While this statement is true, it totally disregards *how* lenient it is.
Basically, anyone, anywhere, can take this work and do anything (noncommercial) with the work. Write a screenplay. Make a rap version of it. Write fanfic. Anything.
Although some franchises turn a blind eye to such activies (startrek fanfic, for example, is allowed to exist), Doctorow is, literally, giving us all a license to whatever we want.
In today's world of "sue first, ask questions later", this move is amazing and should be applauded. Good job! I hope that this proves to be a success, both from a creative perspective and an economic one.
Complimenting e-books and paper seems reasonable, though I'll go to the paper first every time
Definitely, paper if you actually want to read the thing, electronic to give you more flexibility in using the text, as you and the author of the article mention. We all know what staring at a screen for long periods does to your eyes, even if you have a large, hi-res monitor. Given the choice of one, it has to be paper.
I've finally got around to changing my sig
Perhaps it is the general preference for the printed page that gives the electronic release its power. It may tease the reader into buying the whole book later on. Also, it can't hurt the buzz.
Of course some say print is dead. But if print is dead then so too is the novel. No one wants to read 300 plus pages on a screen. And more importantly, no one wants to re-read a novel on screen. Very little interaction with the object there. No sense of "consumption."
E-book publishers fail to take into account the fact that for many readers books are an object of beauty in themselves - we love the smell, feel, and character of a well made book. As things stand I can only see one or two future uses for the medium outside niche markets such as computing textbooks.
1)Electronic versions of books included with the printed version in place of an index - with an html or similar interface for searching.
2)If some genius could come up with a device which stored ebooks on a drive, and which was capable of having an old book put in the top (to be pulped, recycled, then reprinted with the text of a new ebook and re-bound). Can't see this happening though!
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
I paraphrase your front page:
"Slashdot is a lie because most of its users surf from Windows XP".
And I answer thus:
"Democracy is a lie because the most fanatical supporters of democracy choose to live in countries dominated by brutal dictators."
Why should someone have to take extra steps beyond using a standard web browser to read content provided *on the web*? Perhaps the provider of the content should make the text available in a standard web format that all web browsers can read properly?
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
I prefer my references to be electronic and my reading-for-enjoyment material to be paper.
:P
I am not entirely sure why I prefer paper for enjoyment reading, but the reference material should be obvious (Ctrl+F).
I've tried reading eBooks for enjoyment, but while I can sit and read an 800 page book in one sitting I often find that I can't read an eBook for anywhere near as long.
One of the reasons, of course, being that unless I want a workout I can't lie on my back on my bed and read an eBook, my monitor is too heavy
Another being the distraction level on a computer is a lot higher, email coming, games at my fingertips, etc.
And then there is the brightness factor, maybe it is just psychological, but I find that trying to sit down and read an eBook after already staring at a screen for 14 hours not only makes my head hurt, but it doesn't de-stress me nearly as well because I am still sitting in front of the computer...
Whee signature.
I don't know about e-books as a marketing tool for books or method to mkae money, but I do not think you can say e-books are a failure truthfully.
Just look at Project Gutenberg. I know I, and other college students, use it often to read books that are public domain yet sold at amazingly inflated prices at the college bookstore. With such a large selection of interesting topics it is easy to find most of the classics and select ones you want to read.
Perhaps e-books aren't the great moneymaker of the Internet, or it might be that no one has found the right business model. Either way they are from failures at promoting higher literacy and education among students.
Unless it's a computer book.. I know I've got books that act as references to software that no-one uses anymore because newer versions have come out, as well as references for APIs that I end up not using because expansions in newer versions have rendered it incomplete
It may be true, of course, that they've not become incorrect, and that they may be of historical interest, but that's all the use they are now, and it seems a great waste
Sure, it may not seem as natural to read off a screen as it is to read off paper (primarily, I think, because you can hold a book in your hand, and remember the position you were reading from by that reference), but I'd rather have E-books, or even a web page or stand alone reference program for that, as it avoids the wastage.
Are very interesting. Not just for software, articles, books, but also for music and art.
Basically this is the extension of the GPL into other domains, based much on the same premise: I license you my work to use if you agree to license your derived works on the same basis.
It's a wonderful thing, and I believe it's workable, even in commercialized fields like music and publishing. The number of artists who are unable to get their (good) work published is extraordinary. Using a CC license they can publish it, and while making no less money than if it was not published, create many more opportunities for fame and fortune.
The established media businesses are as much a barrier to sucess for new artists as they are a source of income to established ones. The CC licenses provide the basis for a change.
It remains to be see whether we will see a creative explosion in other fields as we have seen in software. Finally, Free Music, Free Art, and Free Words.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
You're right about the prices for printed books being extortionate though.
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
Horizontal scrolling to read in my humble experience is annoying, too bad someone didn't do a better job of formatting it.
Umm... How big of a font do you use in your browser?
A lot of people have complained about the formatting, but I use an out-of-the-box Netscape 7.0, and it looks fine - Standard 80-column plaintext, just like you'd get from an old DOS text file, or anything from Project Gutenberg. No long lines, no funky characters, no gaudy color schemes...
Sure, making it a tad prettier wouldn't hurt, but I don't know why everyone has complained about it so far. Have people actually grown so used to having pretty NP fonts, with a nice background and internal hyperlinks, that they can't stand what once-upon-a-time existed as the dominant form of text on the PC?
"For quick reference they can't be beat!"
I think you've hit the nail on the head. If I have a hard copy of the LotR trilogy and an electronic copy, I'll get exactly the same story, same information. Heck, probably even the same font.
Aside from the information, their uses can be vastly divergent. Lets say that I'm writing a college term paper on the LotR. With the electronic copy, I can search through it with a few key strokes and be 100% accurate. Doing the same thing with a hard copy would require days/weeks of annotating with pen/paper as you read it. And having done such a thing, its much less enjoyable to read when you have to stop every few minutes to make notes rather than just let the story flow.
I don't think ebooks are failures, they just have different strengths compared to dead tree copies.
Shadow
Now that "Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom" (DaOitMK) has been released under the least-restrictive Creative Commons licence, the possibilities of completely legal fanfic emerge. You know what? It's a good thing.
Cory Doctorow created a very interesting "universe" that other writers can play around in. A society where nobody really dies, where we've outgrown the need to work to earn our food and shelter, and where a person's reputation is more important than their net worth? Think about it: it's a very rich world to write stories in.
Yeah, most fanfic sucks. But sometimes people write fics that are as good as the movie or TV show they are riffing on. I can think of two people who wrote "Daria" fic who have a great future ahead of them as writers: CE Forman and Kara Wild. If there ever is a revival of the series (which won't happen and there are very good reasons why it shouldn't) they should be brought on board as official writers for the series.
Fanfic is often a way for a less-than-secure writer to exercise their writing muscles without the fuss, muss or bother of creating characters and environments for the characters to interact in. I know...I've written a little in my day, although I'm not proud enough to link to it so that you can see it.
Who knows what will happen once the DaOitMK universe starts expanding thanks to the work of fanfic writers? I suspect this endeavor might even spawn some writers who might not have gotten into writing otherwise.
Thank you, Cory Doctorow. You have given quite a generous gift...maybe more generous than you will ever know.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Maybe you are not aware of it, but more and more ppl own a PDA.
I know every salesman in my company does, and so do most techs...
In my old Palm Vx, that I happen to carry in replacement of the paper one that I has to "upgrade" to newest year every year, I happen to have 3 years backlog of all my meetings, most of my contact, quite a few emails...and, as I already have the PDA, I take a few books with me whenever I have to travel or go to work (public transportation, 1 hour and then some, so time to read)
Remember that paper organizer are now becoming a rarity in my field (IT), because they are kludgy, hard to manage and they don't remind me of the next meeting by beeping...
So if I take as basis that paper organizer are down, and PDAs are up, I already have a PDA and I enjoy reading books on it as a bonus...
Something I wrote back in May 2003.
The failure of E-books, Downloadable software, and Online Music.
We all have seen the many publisher provided services for purchasing E-books, E-Music, and Software Downloads.
These services try to limit your options and choices or even to remove them from you totally. With many of these services you must agree that you do not even own that which you wish to purchase in order to buy it. Instead they license you right to use their private property.
We see the prices on the virtual which rival that of the physical. We instinctively know that the production cost of a E-book, Downloaded software, or MP3s is so much less than the cost of a compact disc or a printed book both of which require paper, ink, artwork, packaging and so much more that is totally lacking from the ethereal versions.
Their sales decline. "Stop the thieves" they cry out into the night! Make more and harsher laws to protect that which is already protected they demand of our governments. Protect our property and damn their rights is their idea of an ideal. I am a honest person is my vehement reply. So why attempt punish me for the crimes of others.
They attempt to smother new technology on the premise that it may possibly be used for illegal activity.
While it is not my intention to justify the theft of their material I must point out it's their own fault really. I blame their lack of foresight and their lack of anything resembling common sense. They do not exploit the markets available for them or if they do it's a halfhearted attempt. In the real world people are not buying what you sale one common step generally taken is to consider lowering your prices until your sales pick up. This also applies on the Internet.
In a concise conclusion I state that I personally prefer to compensate the authors and composers of the material that I so enjoy in my daily life. Currently I do so off-line. So Publishing and recording industries I say make it worth my while and convenient to do so and I will be one of the first in line online.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
- Ebook hardware is crap. The screen is to small, &c &c.
- EBook files are far too restricted -- I don't want to lose all my books when I upgrade to a new machine or reader.
- EBooks are far too expensive.
- You can't fold down the page corners on an ebook.
All these complaints are about some current implementations of ebooks, not inherent in the format. Yes, some reader hardware isn't good, some ebook files are overly-protected, and some reader apps are limited. But all this is changing, and will change more in future. There's nothing that says you have to have dedicated hardware; many different types of pocket computer are already good for reading ebooks, and I expect many more will become available. There's an awful lot of books available as plain text, both legally (free like Project Gutenberg, or paid like Fictionwise), and otherwise (P2P &c), which is both platform- and future-proofed. And some reader apps already handle bookmarks, annotations, &c. Most of these objections may seem silly in a few years.- No-one would ever read an entire book on screen. Paper is much easier on the eye.
- There's nothing like being able to pick up a book and hold it.
- You can't give ebooks as presents.
These are mostly a matter of personal taste. Many people find that a good screen (whether desktop or palmtop) is easy enough on the eye that the other advantages of ebooks outweigh that objection. If you can pick up a book, then you have to have some space to put it into in the first place; some people have far more HD space available than bookshelf space. And people already give 'virtual' presents -- just think of book tokens, for example.In short, almost all the objections people are making are valid but limited -- to certain types of people, and/or current technology. I doubt ebooks will replace dead-tree books in the foreseeable future, but there's no reason why they may not provide a popular alternative.
Personally, I've read far more on the screen of my Psion than I have on paper for the last few years; my library is over 80MB of compressed text. I always have something to read, wherever I am, and I can edit things as I wish (e.g. converting to British English spelling). The only place where paper is still better for me is on the loo; elsewhere, ebooks are more useful -- especially for reading in bed, where the backlight lets me read in the dark!
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.