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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.
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!
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
Funny, that happens to me every time I have to use a PC too.
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.