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Will Books Be Napsterized?
langelgjm writes "An article from yesterday's New York Times asks the question: will books be Napsterized? So far, piracy of books has not reached the degree of music or movie piracy, in part due to the lack of good equipment on which to read and enjoy pirated books. The article points to the growing adoption of e-book readers as the publishing industry's newest nemesis. With ever-cheaper ways to conveniently use pirated books, authors and publishers may be facing serious changes ahead. This is something I wrote about three months ago in my journal, where I called the Kindle DX an 'iPod for books.'"
I travel most of the year and don't like to lug too many books around. But I always have my laptop (yes, the screen is not ideal, but still...). A surprisingly large amount of what I want to read -- even obscure academic monographs -- are already available as scanned or OCRed PDFs on websites based in the former Soviet Union. It is in fact quite rare for me not to find what I'm looking for, and just as with music from file-sharing services, I've already downloaded more books than I'll ever be able to get through.
One fundamental point that tends to get overlooked is that unlike CDs or cassette tapes before them, books traditionally came with built-in DRM, insofar as copying them (via scan/OCR/proofread) was a really tedious process. Whereas it's relatively easy to crack the DRM on, for example, MobiPocket or Microsoft Reader books (and probably ePub by now). So the DRM'd formats are easier to pirate than the previous "analog"-analog format. What this portends for the future remains to be seen, but wearing my full-time novelist hat, I'm a bit worried. The music industry has efficiently trained people to grab files without throwing money at the artists, by bringing the role of publishers into disrepute. Now we're all set to repeat the experience, and unlike a rock band, most authors don't perform well on stage.
Try them on an N800 with fbreader. the pixel density on the 800x480 screen makes it quite enjoyable. Not for pdf's though
GP is referring to the Netflix streaming service, not the DVD delivery service.
"Authors don't usually make much money from the publishers anyway, and do the writing to further their own career, rather than for cash.
I can definitely add an 'amen' to this. As a newly-minted phd in a field in which book publication is a normal part of achieving tenure, here's how it works (in the US anyway; other countries vary slightly): you get your first academic job. In 4-6 years you go up for tenure review, at which time you've either met publication requirements for tenure at your institution (varies widely, but "two articles and a book" is pretty common at a teaching-oriented institution), in which case you get tenure and a $10-20k salary bump. Or you didn't meet tenure and you get fired. So the pressure to publish is, shall we say, quite high. Because it's assumed your book will be an academic book, and as such probably only of interest to other scholars in your sub-field, tenure committees pay absolutely no attention to book sales. A book on the role of the western crop weevil on the Tongan famine of 1832 which sold 1000 copies (mostly to academic libraries) 'counts' just as much toward tenure as a book on the contemporary opium trade in Afghanistan which, being of interest to policy makers and journalists as well as academics, might sell 10,000 copies. In either case, royalties for academic books are negligible - you'd be lucky to make a couple of thousand on any book, even a reasonably well respected one. However, as I mentioned, getting published does have a large financial impact in that it contributes significantly toward getting tenure and other steps up the academic career path. In short, getting a book published is potentially worth tens of thousands of dollars to you, but with almost zero connection between this fiscal impact and the number of copies sold.
From my point of view as an academic writer, I want the ideas expressed in my articles and books to be available to anyone who is interested in them - having those books or articles cost money does not significantly benefit me, and actually blocks access to my ideas. Given that the cheapest way to make work available to everyone is to put it on the web, the only motivation I still have to go through a publisher is this publication process (and the peer review which goes with it) is necessary for my work to 'count' to tenure committees and the like.
Try a device that uses an eInk display.
The price is dropping. I expect in 3-5 years you'll be able to get them for ~$100.
Agreed with the e-ink suggestion, but I think the $100 price point will be hit in more like 1 to 1-1/2 years. In the past few months alone they've already dropped down to $200 for a 5" device (already seen on specials for <$180). Hell, a "refurbed" Kindle 1 (refurbed in quotes because they're actually "new old stock") goes for $150 on the Amazon Outlet. A friend bought one less than a year ago for $360 when that was the current model.
Many style guides recommend using apostrophes in plurals of acronyms and initialisms. It makes them easier to read, as you can tell whether the s is part of the acronym.
No existe.