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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 can't think of many examples where I've prefered an e-reference over printed matter. The paradigm is that paper is portable and requires no power (aside from a light source) to read, never expires, never needs an upgrade (other than me needing glasses, which would apply equally in either case) and is durable (drop my Zaurus or laptop and I'll cry, drop my book and I'll just pick it back up.)
Complimenting e-books and paper seems reasonable, though I'll go to the paper first every time.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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
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.
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.
Thanks for taking an unreadable format and making it even more unreadable.
=======
P.S. Bite! You've been bitten by the Original AIDS Monkey! You have AIDS now!
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.
see you're missing the point
the article is free but the word wrapping is offered as a premium service.
Several open source projects like MySQLhave found a way to make money by selling their maunal as a printed book, even though all of the content of said book is already available online. Some people just like having their documentation on paper so they have more screen space for other things.
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."
I work for a large corporate library with a large collection of eBooks. They are easily more popular than the hard copies. For quick reference they can't be beat!
having gone to your web site, it reads:
Slashdot is a lie. While its purpose is to advance the cause of OSS and Lunix, its users overwhelmingly use Microsoft products to surf the web. Recently I put forth a challenge to slashdot my site in my sig file. The idea of turning a server into a smoking pile of metal is irresistible to the average Slashdotter. The hits began pouring in. Now you'd think that my referral logs would show that the visitors coming from Slashdot would be using Mozilla under Lunix. You'd be wrong though.
So, the people that came to your site represent all of Slashdot? The people that read your sig...which by the way, I personally never saw at all until now, represent all of Slashdot?
How can you make a sweeping generalization like that? Also, where in the offical Slashdot headlines or titles does it say "to advance the cause of OSS and Linux"? I look at it now, all I see is "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters". Plus, a ton of the stories here don't even have anything to do with computers!
I don't really see what you're point is. Also, where is the "lie" you speak of. A lie means a deliberate falsehood, so show me where the people accessing your site SAY they're using Linux, but are lying and using Windows.
Anyway, thought it was interesting, and this post will probably be modded down to bedrock.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Indeed, I just cut and pasted it into KWrite and it looks great.
Then I really got into the spirit of the thing:
I printed it and read it on paper.
KFG
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
Hey, if we're doing a spot of shameless plugging here, i'll risk a few karma points ;)
My partner has written a book, which after failing to get it off the ground by selling it, we decided to make into an e-book and give away for free. It's a bit different to almost any other books, in that it's laid out from articles and clippings from assorted fictional magazines, books, and newspapers, with lots of pictures. Nice and easy to read on a computer screen, though.
More info, and download as a PDF, at http://pigpog.com/mblm/. There's also the option to just read it online, but only part of it is up there so far - enough to decide if it's worth the download, though.
It's the story of a boy band from the 80s, based in the UK. They rise to reasonable fame, then fall back to obscurity. Except one of them can't take the obscurity, and hatches a plan to return...
Our vague plan for getting anything back from this is that she's working on the second book in the story, which will hopefully be sold in a slightly more conventional way.
PigPog.
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.
Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books
Paper for the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference, 2004
February 12, 2004
San Diego, CA
Cory Doctorow
doctorow@craphound.com
--
Forematter:
This talk was initially given at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference [ http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004 ], along with a set of slides that, for copyright reasons (ironic!) can't be released alongside of this file. However, you will find, interspersed in this text, notations describing the places where new slides should be loaded, in [square-brackets].
This text is dedicated to the public domain, using a Creative Commons public domain dedication:
> Copyright-Only Dedication (based on United States law)
>
> The person or persons who have associated their work with this
> document (the "Dedicator") hereby dedicate the entire copyright
> in the work of authorship identified below (the "Work") to the
> public domain.
>
> Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at
> large and to the detriment of Dedicator's heirs and successors.
> Dedicator intends this dedication to be an overt act of
> relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights
> under copyright law, whether vested or contingent, in the Work.
> Dedicator understands that such relinquishment of all rights
> includes the relinquishment of all rights to enforce (by lawsuit
> or otherwise) those copyrights in the Work.
>
> Dedicator recognizes that, once placed in the public domain, the
> Work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used,
> modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any
> purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including
> by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.
--
For starters, let me try to summarize the lessons and intuitions I've had about ebooks from my release of two novels and most of a short story collection online under a Creative Commons license. A parodist who published a list of alternate titles for the presentations at this event called this talk, "eBooks Suck Right Now," [eBooks suck right now] and as funny as that is, I don't think it's true.
No, if I had to come up with another title for this talk, I'd call it: "Ebooks: You're Soaking in Them." [Ebooks: You're Soaking in Them] That's because I think that the shape of ebooks to come is almost visible in the way that people interact with text today, and that the job of authors who want to become rich and famous is to come to a better understanding of that shape.
I haven't come to a perfect understanding. I don't know what the future of the book looks like. But I have ideas, and I'll share them with you:
1. Ebooks aren't marketing. [Ebooks aren't marketing] OK, so ebooks *are* marketing: that is to say that giving away ebooks sells more books. Baen Books, who do a lot of series publishing, have found that giving away electronic editions of the previous installments in their series to coincide with the release of a new volume sells the hell out of the new book -- and the backlist. And the number of people who wrote to me to tell me about how much they dug the ebook and so bought the paper-book far exceeds the number of people who wrote to me and said, "Ha, ha, you hippie, I read your book for free and now I'm not gonna buy it." But ebooks *shouldn't* be just about marketing: ebooks are a goal unto themselves. In the final analysis, more people will read more words off more screens and fewer words off fewer pages and when those two lines cross, ebooks are gonna have to be the way that writers earn their keep, not the way that they promote the dead-tree editions.
2. Ebooks complement paper books. [Ebooks complement paper books]. Having an ebook is good. Having a paper book is good. Having both is even better. One reader wrote to me and said that he read half my first
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.
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
Ebooks aren't dead. People just haven't caught on to the real reasons to read ebooks on your palm pilot other than a real book. Compactness, you can cram about a 100 ebooks on an average 128mb memory stick. This is the eqivilant of carrying a small library with you every where you go. An this is very important. Nothing is worse than being suck on the can with nothing to read.
This goes to my second reason with compactness. You can stick a palm pilot in you pocket when you head to the can at work. It looks less suspicous when you head to the head to take a shi than if you had a book under your arm. Boss won't notice as much.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
ebook will fail along they still expensive. you can buy a cheap edition of some book, even a best seller, read it during an airplane trip and discard it. you can't do it with a ebook reader.
ebook reader's are expensive. I remember a model that had a cover with "leather smell", to appeal to paper book readers, another marketing moron displaying it's stupidity: a reader reads a book because of the contents. judging a book for it's cover is for illiterates... or marketing morons.
reading on a gorgeous wide and tall screen of a palm sized device doesn't fit in my sense of confort.
an last but not least, random access... you can flip through the pages of a book as you wish, looking for random passages or particular points of the text. the close to a book flip that you can do with a ebook reader is the fast forward, backward, or select a given page... not that bad.
ebooks can be a huge success when cheap reader appear. something with a screen the size of a pocket book, with good contrast, backlight could be a plus, but not essential. also an ebook not tied to some proprietary DRMed format. I want to download some of the classicals available at the project Guthenberg or simmilars and read it. and a cheaper price tag. if the costs of distribution, stocking are being cutted, I want my share.
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.
Personally, I'd like to see a low-power (eight to sixteen hours on a single charge) tablet-PC-like device, one which is as easy on the eyes as a normal book (not that hard, really[1]), has a small-but-useful amount of storage (say, 8M of RAM and 512M of compactflash), and into which I can upload textbooks and course notes for all of my college courses. It has to be durable as well; I should be able to accidentally knock this thing off a table into an aquarium, and it should still work.
Give it some simple handwriting recognition, some decent calculation software, and the ability to link up with a desktop via a USB cable, and you could sell tons of these things to college students. I know I'd jump at the opportunity to not lug around a 40lb backpack, laptop case, two-inch binder filled with notes...oh, and a rew reference manuals...even if it cost me a few hundred bucks. Textbook publishers could also get in on the game; charge half as much for an E-book (which can't be resold), and use this as incentive to sell the tablet devices. Everyone wins -- the publishers make more money (no printing, shipping, or warehousing costs), the tablet maker wins, and the students win (less back strain, cheaper textbooks, ability to have an entire library in a satchel).
[1] If you're willing to keep it black-and-white, just use a farly high-resolution LCD, and use a plain white sheet of paper as a background; the paper will reflect ambient light properly, except where the LCD is active -- presto, paper-like black-on-white text, just like a book.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
I am a phd student and as a result I am often writing research papers with lots of references. I know that I would LOVE to have ebook versions of the books I read so that I wouldn't have to spend so much time trying to find one line or one paragraph in a book that talked about something I want to cite. I would love to be able to do a keywork seach for these books. It would help sooo much.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
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
Open speech in Firefox. -A -C Open Word processor -V Click "little-r" (for ebook reader) Conversion to eBook & sync'd to iPaq. Now I can read why eBooks didn't make it on my handheld, like I have for all of his books, as well as about 3 dozen others.
Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books --Paper for the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference, 2004
February 12, 2004 - San Diego, CA
Cory Doctorow doctorow@craphound.com
--
Forematter:
This talk was initially given at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology
Conference [ http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004 ], along
with a set of slides that, for copyright reasons (ironic!) can't
be released alongside of this file. However, you will find,
interspersed in this text, notations describing the places where
new slides should be loaded, in [square-brackets].
This text is dedicated to the public domain, using a Creative
Commons public domain dedication:
> Copyright-Only Dedication (based on United States law)
>
> The person or persons who have associated their work with this
> document (the "Dedicator") hereby dedicate the entire copyright
> in the work of authorship identified below (the "Work") to the
> public domain.
>
> Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at
> large and to the detriment of Dedicator's heirs and successors.
> Dedicator intends this dedication to be an overt act of
> relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights
> under copyright law, whether vested or contingent, in the Work.
> Dedicator understands that such relinquishment of all rights
> includes the relinquishment of all rights to enforce (by lawsuit
> or otherwise) those copyrights in the Work.
>
> Dedicator recognizes that, once placed in the public domain, the
> Work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used,
> modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any
> purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including
> by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.
--
For starters, let me try to summarize the lessons and intuitions
I've had about ebooks from my release of two novels and most of a
short story collection online under a Creative Commons license. A
parodist who published a list of alternate titles for the
presentations at this event called this talk, "eBooks Suck Right
Now," [eBooks suck right now] and as funny as that is, I don't
think it's true.
No, if I had to come up with another title for this talk, I'd
call it: "Ebooks: You're Soaking in Them." [Ebooks: You're
Soaking in Them] That's because I think that the shape of ebooks
to come is almost visible in the way that people interact with
text today, and that the job of authors who want to become rich
and famous is to come to a better understanding of that shape.
I haven't come to a perfect understanding. I don't know what the
future of the book looks like. But I have ideas, and I'll share
them with you:
1. Ebooks aren't marketing. [Ebooks aren't marketing] OK, so
ebooks *are* marketing: that is to say that giving away ebooks
sells more books. Baen Books, who do a lot of series publishing,
have found that giving away electronic editions of the previous
installments in their series to coincide with the release of a
new volume sells the hell out of the new book -- and the
backlist. And the number of people who wrote to me to tell me
about how much they dug the ebook and so bought the paper-book
far exceeds the number of people who wrote to me and said, "Ha,
ha, you hippie, I read your book for free and now I'm not gonna
buy it." But ebooks *shouldn't* be just about marketing: ebooks
are a goal unto themselves. In the final analysis, more people
will read more words off more screens and fewer words off fewer
pages and when those two lines cross, ebooks are gonna have to be
the way that writers earn their keep, not the way that they
promote the dead-tree editions.
2. Ebooks complement paper books. [Ebooks complement paper
books]. Having an ebook is good. Having a paper book is good.
Having both is even
You don't need to.
:)
It's a text file, and I assume the server sent text/plain as its type. Worked fine in Firefox, I thought maybe the OP meant "IE" when they said a standard browser, so I checked in IE6. Looked fine there as well.
At about 12 words per line, it's even easy to read as well, so I have no idea what they're whining about
As someone who recently purchased his "Down and out in the Magic Kingdom", I would say the e-book had almost no influence on my purchase. I knew about it being available online, and it did give Cory "cool points" for being involved in the creative commons and other excellent projects. But, I never even looked at the online version.
I purchased in the traditional way.. I browsed it on the shelves of my local small bookstore. I then checked if it was available at my local used bookstore. When it wasn't there, I returned to the small bookstore & purchased it there. (The two stores are next door to each other.. very handy.)
As Cory acknowledges, noone is going to read a text of significant duration online. Until there is an e-book reader device that can better replicate the look/feel/portability/durability of paper and won't strain my eyes, then I'm sticking to paperbacks.
I read books only on my Palm anymore. I certainly would prefer to read on paper instead of my IIIxe's greenish screen (I'm upgrading soon), but I never carry books around with me, and if I do, just in my bag so I only have them at my desk.
With 3 or 4 books in my Palm, I've got a book to read everywhere. I've read 10 times more books since using the Palm than when on paper.
Also we're way over capacity on paper books in our house; we just don't have room for what we have. We have about 300 linear feet of shelf space, much of it double-shelved, and another couple hundred pounds of books in boxes. I'm just not going to add to that by buying more paper.
Thank God for Baen books. I'd decided not to buy from Peanut Press anymore because I dislike having to remember credit card numbers from 5 years ago to unlock books, and I dislike paying as much for eBooks as for paper; I should at least get a few bucks off.
Baen publishes much of their catalog electronically, in open formats, at reasonable prices.
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.
eBooks can work, and will work as soon as someone gets all the pieces in place. The obvious model would be to follow Apple's iTunes / iPod. Make a hardware reader that has a great screen, light, and relatively inexpensive, and is a joy to use. Have it read as many formats as possible: HTML, RTF, Word Docs, don't dick around with DRM and proprietary formats. Have it read saved web pages. Have an internal hard drive. Next, have software on the computer that acts as a library much like iTunes. Make it easy to share and even read on your computer if need be, via a web browser.
Get all this crap in place and you will make a mint. Sell the books for 99 cents even. Heck I bet Apple is already working on this (They do audio books).
1. While I haven't seen it myself, a professor of mine in college got a chance at some research lab who did display/rendering work to read a document rendered on-screen at 600 DPI (yes, six HUNDRED)! That's the exact same density as the pages your printer typically spits out. Consumer systems at the moment do what, somewhere between 72 and 96DPI on-screen? He said that all of his objections about eye-strain completely vanished in a moment.
2. Even for those of us who won't have access to on-screen densities in the 600 DPI range for another 20 years -- if you haven't looked at font-rendering on a Mac in the last 5 years -- do yourself the favor! I hadn't done so in several years and the quality of fonts on the Mac is stunning, even (especially?) on their laptops. When I turned back to my own computer (someone had brought in a new Powerbook at work), my eyes instantly started tearing up. It really bothered me to look at my own screen for the next 5 minutes.
One of the big problems I have had with the idea of e-books is that there is no agreement in the industry on how we should accomplish the sale and distribution of those texts. I am a fan of the Safari website, but I know that I can't get those books for offline reading. I like to download some books for Microsoft Reader, but I know that I might not always be able to access that book, and have no guarentee that I will be able to read it on more than one computer.
E-books are a wonderful tool for research and to help some unknown authors get works out to the public, but with the uproar that MP3's have made, I can't forsee any publisher really pushing to make this a force of format. It reminds me of a technology that is very useful, user friendly, easy to produce and even fun to use, but is sidelined because the people that could make it happen are too afraid to step on any toes.
The one thing that I fear about this, though, is a format being pushed forward and then patented and soon, you end up basically paying another tax, just to read a book, because the format is locked in stone. What happens when all of the works of Shakespear are now avaliable for $19.95, and only from Adobe GreatWorks(TM).
If I could get a firm grip on reality, I'd choke it...
Remember to bring your public key and a couple forms of ID!
Seriously-my palm zire 71 was just too small [although for reading in the bathtub it can't be beat]. But my motion tabletpc works great for this. the screen is big enough, and its among the lighter tablets-meaning its truly workable for reading with. My favorite author sold a hardback book with a CD of all of his older books-I was in heaven. You can even read comic books without the size relationship being distorted. They have a close out fo older motion m1200's going on for like $1300. yeah its spendy-but it truly makes e-books worthwhile, and reading is one of my major hobbies. Not to mention you can go out on your porch at night, grab a soda and surf the net under the stars.
This is an exceptionally fine piece, and I greatly enjoyed reading it.
g g=1&mg=2
Some impressions:
Although I'm happy that Mr. Doctorow has made a profit off his creative commons releases, I have a feeling that his case is an exception rather than the rule, and that once the the novelty value of creative commons content released by commercial publishers die down fewer people will be inclined to try first, buy later. (That is not worse than the status quo however). As pda's and ereaders become more user friendly, the temptation not to buy the hard copy will become irresistable for creative commons works.
I advocate a tip-based model of artistic compensation http://www.geocities.com/bigbadlinux/. Perhaps voluntary "pay-what-you-want" scenario is unrealistic, but compensation becomes viable when the pricepoint is low enough to seem insignificant.
A few years ago, memberships to porn sites cost 30-50$ a month; nowadays even most of them offer 1 day or 1 week memberships for gigabytes of movies. One could use emule to get these things, but when the price point starts resembling chump change, that's when people start voluntarily paying for online content.
If you look at this audio book site, for example http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/screen_main.asp?
downloading mp3 audios for entire novels cost only about $5. That's close to the level of chump change.
Right now POD books easily sell for $10-12, but 100% virtual content could probably go for $2-3. Content needs to be priced in a way that appears to be chump change for the buyer/reader but gains enough readership for chump change to add up to something substantial. Fortunately, the existence of weblogs like www.maudnewton.com and viral marketing make it easier to get your content out there.
The future is weblogs people.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Formats fine in Mozilla.
to further use the porn example, the lowering of price of online porn has NOT resulted in a decrease in porn quality. I realize this is a subjective opinion, but I think the same effect will apply to many kinds of content, not just porn.
Therefore, when I say, wait until the price point becomes chump change, I am not implying that reduction in price implies a reduction in content standards. It may not even imply a reduction in compensation for creators. (It really is amazing how many things we can learn about content just by looking at the porn issue).
btw, an essay I wrote about online types of adult entertainment: Pleasure Manifesto (work safe).
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
I wrote the O'Reilly book XForms Essentials and released it under the GFDL. I can say from experience that freeing the text has helped promote the book to audiences that would not have otherwise heard of it.
In order to deal with the rapidly changing technology, I launched a companion web site XForms Institute.
Particularly with technical books, "multimodal" publishing is smart. I'm glad to see Cory try it with fiction. -m
--- Learn XForms today: http://xformsinstitute.com
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?
I think that more than half of my reading, apart from what I read to prepare for class, is older books that I can get in ebook format and that are in the public domain. The only things I like paper books more for is being able to read in the bathtub (oh, for a waterproof Clie), ease of marginal annotation, and ability to flip through quickly (my Clie screen is too small to find things quickly by flipping through).
Searching is helpful. Having a book in one's pocket always is great. Some of the things I read are parts of enormous multi-volume sets that I wouldn't have room on a bookshelf for. For instance, dozens of volumes of Cardinal Newman or of the Jesuit Relations. Various classic books, too, are greatly improved by hyperlinking. For instance, Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae which has lots of back-references.
At one point my wife claimed to find it to be more fun to read in ebook format on a Clie NX60/70 (using Plucker) than to read the dead-tree editions. Autoscrolling was particularly nice when our baby was small and we had no hands free while doing things for the baby.
And, yes, it's nice to have a big library with one. I've got some 600mb of flash on my NX70. It's expensive, but when one considers the cost of printed books, it's not so bad. (For instance, I bet the complete works of Cardinal Newman would set me back a couple of hundred dollars in print format for the books themselves, and more when one considers the cost of another bookcase.) I just wish everybody published in ebook format. Then I wouldn't have to buy physical books almost at all.
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)"
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.
My Zaurus SL-C750 has completely changed the way I read. I'm starting to get really annoyed by the physicality of real books now, in the same way that my jukebox MP3 player has made me get annoyed with CDs. There is an excellent reader program which reads all sorts of formats (including Plucker and AportisDoc), and the smooth text scrolling is supremely smooth because of the 640x480 display. And of course, I can use it in portrait or landscape mode (when the screen is rotated, the display auto-rotates).
It's so much better having a small, compact auto-scrolling backlit display to read from. Holding a book and turning pages is annoying.
- 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.
Depends on the reader to be honest. I've used my GamePark32 to read at least 5+ books. The ONLY thing I have to worry about is battery charge but 2 AA rechargables last for at least 4+ hours of book reading. Not to mention I can easily bookmark where i'm at and carry an entire library's worth of books in my pocket. (128mb smart media cards, they are incredibly small, I carry a bunch of them in my wallet, very convenient). The bootup time is lighting fast as well if you use the bios hack that boots straight to windups "OS" (which has a built-in e-book reader). I've also used it to read web pages on the go (copy and paste the text to notepad, save the images seperately, there is an image viewer for gp32). For the size (the same size as a gameboy advance) and the benifits (some e-book reader's for gp32 allow you to play mp3's while listening, ability to carry a library's worth of books IN MY POCKET) I personally don't see THAT many benifits to paper versions. Sure you can carry them around but they are bulky as hell. E-books are far from being perfect yet but they are also far from useless. And btw, the format of the e-books I read on it are just simple .txt files. Cheers :)
I don't have a sig, can I borrow yours?