Slashdot Mirror
Free E-Books, With a Catch — Advertising
Velcroman1 writes "Barnes & Noble may kick off a fresh price war today for digital book readers, with its new Nook news. But the real news in digital publishing is a novel approach to the e-books themselves: Free books — with advertising. The basic idea is to offer publishers another way to reach readers and to give readers the chance to try more books — books that perhaps they wouldn't normally peruse if they had to pay more for them. Initially, Wowio specialized in offering digital versions of comic books and graphic novels, usually formatted as Adobe PDFs. So it was a natural step for the company to offer graphic ads that are inserted in e-books. 'We think we're creating a broader audience for some of these titles,' Wowio's CEO Brian Altounian told me. 'I think folks are going to download more books because they're saving the costs' of having to drive to the store or pay more for them. Would ads stop you from reading?" The new color Nook goes for $249, and comes with a browser, games, Quickoffice, streaming music via Pandora, and an SDK; reader itwbennett links to an analysis of how well it stacks up as a tablet.
"It was a dark and stormy night.....in beautiful downtown Vegas!"
Table-ized A.I.
So, is the idea to turn novels, anthologies and reference works into magazines?
Brilliant!
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
And obviously I'm a fucking retard as well, the first article cites the "speculated price" but the second one actually links to the real nook. Maybe I should apply for a job as a slashdot editor.
Monstar L
Gah. Looks like I'll be switching to kindle or sony when I get tired of my current reader. Hopefully I'm wrong about the jump to the backlit bandwagon, but it sure looks like they're trying to be an iPad, only less useful.
Advertising.. sure, why not. no-money books will be good for everyone. But why does the choice have to be between way-overpriced in terms of money, and overpriced in terms of time - advertisements. Why not just price the books at what they're really worth, and make it up in volume. Especially as the marginal cost of an eBook is almost entirely licensing. If eBooks couldn't be shared or copied, but were all between $1 to $3...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
~$250 for a color e-book?
What am I gunna do with it, read "Go dog, go" and "wheres waldo"?
For $250, there better be a happy ending, and I dont mean a kids happy ending, I mean a massage parlor happy ending
Dont spend your money on crap, the Dollar is still worth something!
Are we not all surrounded with enough ads yet? About the only place they're not yet is tattooed on the inside of our eyelids.
To the advertisers: STFU already!
I suppose now is a good time as any to mention Project Gutenber.
Project Gutenberg is excellent - but if we extrapolate the current rate of copyright expansion, books published this century may never enter the public domain.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
The same Wowio who managed to not pay the webcomic authors whose work they were selling?
I am become
I know I found Robin Hobb's Assassin's apprentice and it's subsequent trilogies after it was put up for free on the publishers website. So for giving me 1 free book I bought 8 more and am still reading her latest stuff to come out since then. If I'd not of seen that free book I'd of never bought the rest.
I read books to escape the monotony of real life. I do NOT want to be forcibly reminded of the outside world while trying to lose myself in a novel. So, in short, NO THANKS. I'd rather pay for my books.
True - but for the moment, at least, one can occasionally find texts for which copyright has been snatched by US publishing pirates by looking at Gutenberg sites under different jurisdictions. A case in point is Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: copyright to Rosenblum in the US until at least 2044, but public domain in Australia (and probably Canada).
Why block the Android market? If I could install Android apps, then it would be a cheap tablet and I'd gladly buy it. Without Android market, it is a one-off gadget and overpriced. Why intentionally limit a feature that would otherwise be a selling point?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The whole thing that makes eReaders so brilliant is the reflective screen. I'm fine with backlit screens, but for laptops and desktops. For reader things, a reflective screen is the way to go not only for battery life but for all purpose readability as well. The Kindle really does look "like paper" they aren't kidding. That is what makes it nice.
Damn... I can't imagine that. It's just like watching TV and having to sit through an ad. Something I don't do ever since I longer have a TV. Being forced to watch ads is becoming more of an alien concept to me. On the web I never read popups, popunders or sit through those ads they want you to see before reading. Once again they are reinventing the wheel, and remind me why I have abandoned TV.
The simpler and sources forums are usually the best, and I begrudge a device which I pay (or paid) for being hijacked for ads.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
You young whippersnappers wouldn't remember this, but back in the Olden Days most deadtree books contained advertising. Paperbacks typically had a glossy insert in the middle (most often a cigarette ad), and hardbacks had several pages of ads in the back, usually something at least vaguely relevant to the book's content, and also sometimes ads for other books (and not only from that book's publisher).
It occurs to me that if ads were placed at the end of the ebook (much as ads in hardbacks used to be at the back of the book) there's incentive to improve content, to get the average reader to finish the book and see the ads.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Or they could try producing things people would actually pay for and foster an economy where people have enough money to do so...
http://manybooks.net/ and http://feedbooks.com/ are also excellent sources of free ebooks, providing published, unpublished and public domain titles.
FWIW, personally I abhor ads and would seek to locate an ad-free copy of a given book before purchasing an ad-embedded copy.
It seems most folks here are pretty disgusted at the idea of advertising in books, but how would you feel about direct corporate sponsorships conducted in a tasteful manner? Let's say your favorite sci-fi author's books were all released as Intel Presents or AMD Presents, similar to the old anthology shows from the '50s & '60s such as The Alcoa Hour, Kraft Television Theater, and the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse; would that inspire the same level of disgust?
I'm very interested in finding a way to distribute fiction for free without DRM, thus maximizing the value to readers, while at the same time raising some profit for the writer. Advertising seems to be the optimal way to get it done. The other leading contender would be the Ransom Model, but that has some inherent weaknesses that are rather difficult to work around. If you have other ideas, I'm absolutely all ears.
You can't win, Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Meanwhile there are some new really interesting concepts in the ebook world, like free online reading coupled with new approaches to low-overhead publishing. See for example Libertary, www.libertary.com, some more varied and interesting books and less hype. Libertary's developing a low-overhead publishing model that uses free online reading to generate interest in books as well as a bit more highly featured free reading model. Or, if you have good Chinese, check out www.read-novel.com, probably the largest book site in the world. Or of course there's always Safari. And Boing Boing opened their own book site today. So there actually is some really interesting stuff going on in the free books field.
And obviously I'm a fucking retard [...]
Because it's Slashdot you are probably just a retard.
Given that the extensions of the copyright term were applied retroactively, I don't see the problem with retroactively applying a shorter copyright term. Particularly w.r.t. those works that has had their copyright term extended.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
Gutenberg's great, but what we need is e-lending from Libraries. In the UK, this is sort of possible via Overdrive - if you have an "approved" device then you can borrow eBooks from UK libraries. For some reason they seem to be keeping this a secret despite having done it in some form since 2004.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/26/libraries-ebook-restrictions
Only works on some devices, like the Sony readers.
To me, this is the killer app and I'd buy an eReader that allowed easy borrowing (i.e. time-expired downloads ) of current fiction in a heartbeat...
When I read the Superman comics back in the 60s the ads were for x-ray glasses and muscle building courses. So what's new?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
This is possible in many places in the US. I can "borrow" ebooks from multiple libraries in the area, some of them expiring on a certain date, not sure if there's any other scheme. This works with my nook, as well as the Sony readers, and others like those Borders sells. I don't believe they work with the Kindle, but the Kindle 3 might change that from what I read.
I don't know how it works in the UK, of course.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
If the ads added value to the book.
Imagine a science fiction book with ads for science fiction magazine or a book about learning about
computers that came with ads for newegg. Technology doesnt have to suck just because it can.
I wouldn't make it retroactive (ex post facto), but at least stop the extensions.
It's not ex post facto or retroactive. Congress has the power to change the duration of copyright, whenever it wants, and already did increase the term for existing works and take works out of the public domain.
Congress has the power (but not the obligation) to secure for authors rights for limited times. They can change what type of rights and who/when they are securing them for at any time. There is no contract with congress; they can grant additional rights, or take away existing ones at any time.
Retroactive, would be passing a law requiring users to pay royalties for a copyright work, and demanding people who used the work when the law was not in force, pay the royalties.
Retroactive, would be passing a law extending the term, bringing a public domain work back into copyright, and declaring anyone who distributed the previously public domain works as criminals to be fined or jailed for their acts of distribution, before the law came into force.
This was not ex post facto, because people who were distributing works that had been taken from the public domain back into copyright were not made guilty of infringement, for their actions that were taken when the works were in the public domain.
I am not suggesting congress retroactively forgive the copyright infringement of anyone who pirated a work, when the longer term was in force.