Upbeat on E-books 291
DavidRothman writes "Sunday's NYT Book Review will carry an upbeat article on e-books, complete with mention of the New York Public Library's impressive 3,000-title efforts. The writer, however, misses many of the recent developments of e-bookdom such as the debut of the $100 eBookwise-1150, a reborn Gemstar machine. And the DRM mess and the Tower of eBabel--the horrors that consumers, publishers and libraries face with conflicting proprietary formats of problematic durability and accessibility over the long term--don't get the space they deserve. So far the XML-related OpenReader project, in which I'm involved, is invisible to the big media even though major Internet e-book retailers are quietly coming aboard. Still, it's great to see Times contributor Sarah Glazer being far more receptive to e-books than are many journalists. More at TeleRead."
Free eBooks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free eBooks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free eBooks (Score:5, Informative)
You may now begin the Modding Up process...
Re:Free eBooks (Score:2)
Re:Free eBooks (Score:2)
I bet this would finally accelerate the acceptance in the market.
I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, yeah, and my wife says how are you supposed to read an ebook in the bath?
Give it time (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's an open format, then presumably you could print it without too much hassle. Just because it's distributed electronically doesn't necessarily mean it has to stay in an electronic form for reading it. Electronic distribution on its own has all kinds of advantages if it's not done in a crippling way.
If there's enough of a demand over time, someone may even develop a bathroom ebook reader to which you could tempora
Re:Give it time (Score:4, Funny)
I read ebooks in the bath ! (Score:3, Interesting)
(Actually if you must know, I was reading Lessig's book).
Reading in the bath is probably not a good idea to do all the time, but ebookwise devices are 100$, and I exercised proper caution.
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:3, Informative)
The #bookz channel on IRC has a very large collection of "warez" e-books, and I honestly feel no moral pains while downloading a book I have sitting on my shelf.
As for reading in the bath with a PDA - I do it all the time. I just keep a towel on the floo
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2, Interesting)
Then there's the joy of having pretty much an entire library of books with you at any one time. I always have my Pocket PC with me on the go, so I always have my ebooks. Can't beat the convenience, especially if you have
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2)
You can psychically flip pages? I didn't know telekinesis existed...
PDA/Phone (Score:2)
I expect there are even some phones that you could take in the bath.
A pda could also read the book to you, which is quite good for the train too.
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2)
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:5, Insightful)
Before I got my PDA, I hadn't read more than two books for the fun a year since middle school. Two years ago I got a PDA and have read about 300 novels since then - finishing off the works of most of my favorite authors and starting new ones. I just started and finished the complete works of R.A. Salvatore last month, for example (well...half a book left, and then I'm starting on Tad Williams).
Here are the things I love about it:
You can read while drifting off to sleep. Reading a book requires page turning, which, when you're very, very relaxed, is an effort of coordination. Getting up and turning off the light is enough to make you wake back up again. The PDA will shut itself off, and I can set it to autoscroll, or just press the down button on my pda, both which are very minimal efforts by comparison. Why would I want to read when I'm that relaxed? It's a common phenomenon that the state right before sleep is when you have the greatest connection to your subconsious mind - your imagination is the strongest. Think of it as surround sound for books.
It's less strain on your eyes. With a good PDA, you get better resolution than normal text, and there's a backlight. You can read for longer periods of time without feeling eyestrain. After having seen and tried them, I would never buy an e-book reader because they don't consider this that important, whereas I find it paramount. This may be why there are so many people like you, who think that it's worse. The PDA that I currently use almost exclusively as an e-book reader is a Palm Tungsten E, which is noted for it's especially sharp screen.
You don't have to plan to carry books. A PDA is a convenient thing to have around anyway, so I've got a book with me anywhere. Standing in lines is much more fun now.
I put all my books into my PDA by converting whatever format I have into HTML, and then storing that with plucker, which compresses text into chunks (it uncompresses as the text is needed in an almost unnoticable manner). Usually I have about ten ~300 page novels on my PDA at any one time, which take up about 1.5MB. I have 26MB available for storage. Finish a book, start another without having to go get it.
As far as reading in the bath, I would suggest that a printed copy of a book would be ruined just as PDA would if you got it wet. However, e-books can be printed out, and if the print-out gets wet, you lose little. You don't have to print it all, either, so don't use the argument that printing takes a while. 30 pages at 8 1/2 x11 should be more than enough to turn your wife into a prune before she finishes.
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2)
Man, I remember thinking MS's (or whoever it was that originally developed it) ClearText was a gimmick until I read an ebook.
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:4, Interesting)
I too am a huge fan of reading on the PDA but... even a super high res PDA screen isn't sharper than real print. Sharp ENOUGH, sure.
I'm DONE with paper, for the most part. uBook [gowerpoint.com] on my 640x480 Axim X50V is just sick, and even on my last iPaq (only 320x240) it was very usable.
What the world really needs is a cheap ebook.
- Screen at least 640x480, greyscale
- Good backlight
- CF or SD slot
- A few fonts w/ bold, ital, underline
- Software that digests open formats: Palm DOC, RTF, HTML, TXT
Basically, it would be uBook on a dedicated monochrome device for about $150. Kind of like the Cybook [bookeen.com] but slashed down to essentials.
ebooks won't really hit it big until they are cheap enough that you don't cry when you leave one on the bus.
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2)
Read it on a PDA. The thing is no more succeptable to being dropped in the tub than a book is.
Oh, and a properly done zero-DRM ebook should sell for about as much as a paper copy. DRM or poor quality would, of course, be acceptable if the price is comparably reduced.
Reading in the bath (Score:3, Informative)
I use ziplock sandwich bags I bought in a 99pence shop.
As for whether reading from a screen is conducive to enjoyment of a book: you'll either get used to it or you won't. I suspect most people could get used to it and find it enjoyable if they gave it a chance. Have you?
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2)
I did exactly that on my Clie. Being able to fit a big ol' ox-killer book in the breast pocket of my jacket is nice.
I've read something on the order of twenty or thirty novels on PDAs as well as about four years of monthly SF magazines. I've enjoyed most of that. (When I haven't, it is because the book sucked, not the author.) It's not perfect, true, but it's perfectly doable.
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2)
Depends on what tickles your fancy, I suppose. I'm actually quite enamored with the idea of e-books. A few years ago I purchased a PocketPC and read Tom Sawyer on it. It was great! I could hold the unit with one hand instead of having to force the pages to stay open. Page turning was a matter of using the little thumb wheel. When I shut it off, it remembered my
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2)
Fuiitsu Stylistic 2300. the newer ones are much nicer the Electrovaya Scribbler has great battery life.
Read Swiss Family Robinson to my kids from it. The nice thing is it's usable for a lot more. Using it to post this now.
Handles acrobat
William
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2)
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2)
Of course, technology improves, so there will be a time it wont be relevant anymore.
Something like 5-10 years, i guess, with current display technology improvements.
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2)
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:3, Interesting)
When you have a person read to you, you get their inflections, their impersonations, and their fake voices for the characters.
A computer adds none of these things. You have to imagine what the words would sound like to you just as you would with a written page. The only thing I don't like about it is the speed. You can't adjust it easily, and I tend to read through character actions quickly and dialog slowly.
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2)
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but (Score:2)
Sure. A real bath is a nice change of pace. It requires some time (minimum 1 hour) when you don't have to or want to do anything other than relax. Just fill the tub, jump in, and enjoy.
Most adult's dislike for baths is caused by the tiny bathtub most houses have. So if you have the choice (remodel) put in an oversized tub, and join those of us who enjoy a bath once in a while.
Most of the time I shower, it uses less water, and gets me cleaner. A nice warm bath is more replaxing though.
Best PDA/Reader for E-books? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been thinking of getting a PDA for a while, but have never been sure if I can get a simple one that works well for ebooks without a lot of useless flash I don't need to pay for...
Any hints on what people have found works well in terms of price, battery power, readibility/screen?
Re:Best PDA/Reader for E-books? (Score:2)
If you do use a Palm definitely check out Weasel Reader (http://gutenpalm.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]).
REB1100 (Score:2)
Re:Best PDA/Reader for E-books? (Score:2)
As I stated in my previous post, plucker [plkr.org] can compress anything written in html (or plaintext). So if you can convert your e-book to that format somehow, you're set.
Just an opinion. (Score:2, Insightful)
I love technology and all, and I love using the computer, but after starting at my screen all day every day, if I ever feel like reading something, I'd prefer it wasn't backlit.
Re:Just an opinion. (Score:2)
Not to mention, 20 magazines weight like 20 magazines. Well, I want to carry 2000 books in my handheld, that might be do-able. Again paper sucks. You won't see me carrying a briefcase of books around.
Re:Just an opinion. (Score:2)
In essence, the "paperless society" would probably be much closer to realization. Now, and in the foreseeable future, non-color bo
Choice versus freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
Customers don't get any tangible benefits out of a system that allows copyright holders to intrusively restrict their use of intellectual property. That is why systems like the one employed by iTunes work whereas most do not: in the case of iTunes, it only seeks to protect the status quo of the relationship between buyer and seller.
To that end, as part of the intellectual property right agreement, customers should have a legal right to force eBook publishers to let them print the eBook. If someone pays a few dollars for the eBook and then wants to print it, that is their right regardless of what the law says. It's the customer's paper and their expense. In most cases, it would just be cheaper to buy the print book anyway.
Re:Choice versus freedom (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Choice versus freedom (Score:2)
Thie Right To Read (Score:2)
Respecting Copyrights (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you have the copyright argument backward. The ultimate goal of copyright law is to allow people to create their works without having to worry about others republishing or taking claim of the creation.
The end result of strong copyright (and widespread respect for copyrights) is that publishers can present their works in simpler, universal formats.
When there is no respect for copyrights, then publishers must resort to other measures to protect their works.
If we had widespread respect of copyrigh
Re:Respecting Copyrights (Score:2)
The United States constitution states the goal of copyright law as "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". American copyright law (as opposed to European copyright laws) in no way protects the author from people taking claim of the creation. (In a complete sense, that's beyond the scope
Re:Respecting Copyrights (Score:2)
The trend in stock photography and vidclips is that it's getting very very cheap because the bar has been lowered to so far (which the old "pros" like to bitch about to no end), so hopefully this won't be as much of a problem going forward. Sites like istockphoto.com and creativecommons are making it happen, and you don't have to worry about l
Re:Choice versus freedom (Score:2)
Re:Choice versus freedom (Score:2)
Authors were still writing long before the artificial concept of copyright was invented (and recently perverted), so it's impossible that ALL authors would say "screw it" and switch to more profitable careers. More likely we'd be left with a smaller core of above-average talented writers whose incentive was never primarily making money.
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No PDF support. (Score:2)
Re:No PDF support. (Score:2, Informative)
If it helps, Fictionwise [fictionwise.com] sell all their non-encrypted e-books in PDF, and half a dozen other formats too.
Display Tech is the key. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Display Tech is the key. (Score:2)
2) Antialiasing makes fonts better. Always (ok, one exeption: extremely small fonts with an effective height of only 5-6 pixels. you can decypher most letters and thus recreate the next if not anti-aliased, but with aa it will be only blurry mess). Your fonts only look blurry because the native resolution is to low.
3) Agreed. In fact, having my pda running
Re:Display Tech is the key. (Score:2)
Re:Display Tech is the key. (Score:2)
You can make annotations and comments on them and unprinted I Can Carry thousands of them on my pen slate.
that shelf full of the printed ones is heavy.
William
Re:Display Tech is the key. (Score:2)
Re:Display Tech is the key. (Score:2)
Thats why i dont understand those "we hate pdf, because thats only for printing" idiots. I WANT to read at page 25, 2nd article. Not somewhere in the middle of an endless html file...
This may come as a shock to you, but yes you can break html documents into multiples pages.
Furthermore, as someone who has to read lots of PDFs that are far to large for him to sensibly print, THEY SUCK FOR READING ON A MONITOR. I vastly prefer html or even plain text to pdfs for online perusal.
(another downside to printi
Re:Display Tech is the key. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, we need either a competing, similar technology to compete with the E-ink, or the release of the technology for other companies to work with.
Re:Display Tech is the key. (Score:2)
Re:Display Tech is the key. (Score:2)
You're addressing the ebook reader, and make some good points. But it may be more important to look at it from the other side of the equation - the content. Right now there are some problems with ebooks (the content, not the readers) that are easy to fix. First, they are priced ridiculously. Yes, I know about all the free content and the niche ebook retailers selling cheap ebooks. But that's not going to sustain any market. For mass appeal there needs to be the
Need better readers (Score:3, Interesting)
One would think that in this day and age, someone could make a decent book plaque of some sort with a good display that doesn't give you an epileptic fit or a "lucy in the sky with diamonds" strobing effect after a couple of hours use.
It seems absurd that we have so many advances in CPU speed for instance, but essentially very little in the way of text legibility on monitors. It seems absurd that monitors mimic the dimensions of televisions, and yet the internet and computing in general is primarily a text based medium. I've seen some people rotate their TFT monitors for text, which is a great idea however I'd like to see a greater emphasis placed on making text readable.
Oh, and rendering and embeding decent fonts in html/xhtml wouldn't harm anyone either. It seems ludicrous that people in the 1450s had access to better rendered fonts than what we have to put up with on daily basis on our computers.
Re:Need better readers (Score:2)
Why shouldn't monitors use standard dimentions? (16/9 4/3)
Books are typically taller than they are wide, but I don't see any advantage to that. In fact, it's backwards, because having to scroll side-to-side after every line while reading is infinitely more annoying than scrolling up/down.
Re:Need better readers (Score:2)
The page you're reading at this very moment is a prime example of why - because a web page is not a television program.
You can choose to use whatever fonts you want to use for every page you view,
Indeed, and when the fonts often aren't available, you get an inferior substitue font that regardless of whether it happens to be right or not, renders badly and even with anti-aliasing, still looks inferior to a page printed five hundred years ago.
W
Re:Need better readers (Score:2)
You haven't answered my question. This webpage looks quite good on my 4/3 screen here. Web pages look terrible on a tall skinny screen like a Palm.
Explain yourself.
Re:Need better readers (Score:2)
You're absolutely right... I like responses that make sense.
Re:Need better readers (Score:2)
Perhaps you should entertain the idea that some things are (at least initially) not within the realm of your understanding. Although you may not agree, you can try to understand the ideas around another's point of vi
Re:Need better readers (Score:2)
In the 14th and 15th century however, there were a great deal of competent calligraphers. the calligraphy revival in the 19th and 20th century helped people's handwriting somewhat too.
Pricing (Score:5, Interesting)
I would think that much of the cost of book would go to the production process. Layout, typesetting, printing binding and shipping.
The eBooks however, seem to cost as much as their paper counterparts.
I'd be more inclined to get an eBook reader if the books were more affordible.
Re:Pricing (Score:2, Interesting)
I would think that much of the cost of book would go to the production process. Layout, typesetting, printing binding and shipping.
Easy.
Because the price of e-books, as with a lot of other things, have little to do with the cost of production. Book publishers will charge the maximum amount that the market will let them get away with. In addition, there are a whole lot less big-name electronic publishers than paper ones, so there's less competition to reduce prices.
It
Re:Pricing (Score:2)
Re:Pricing (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the price of e-books, as with a lot of other things, have little to do with the cost of production....so there's less competition to reduce prices. It's all economics!
Yes, but there is a reason that nobody is buying them, and it's not lack of competition.
It is safe to assume that the person who is buying the ebook is not completely stupid as they know how to turn on a computer.
People know that the DRM is draconian for most commercial ebooks, that there is no standard, and that it costs a fraction of the cost of a regular book to produce.
To price an ebook the same as a regular book is insane, as most people prefer the dead tree version to handle on a day to day basis given the choice. It may change someday with better display technologies, but right now paper rules the world. It is also easier to photocopy a couple of pages if you wanted to where the heavily DRMed version would not give you the chance.
I really don't care if commercial ebook ventures crash and burn (and many have), because producers need to gain a sense of reality which they seem to be lacking.
Sure ebooks have a cost to produce. But to say that they are near anywhere that of a regular book is a bald face lie.
You're right, it is econimics, and economics is saying get a clue or go out of business
Re:Pricing (Score:2)
Real paperback bestseller type books cost about $5 at Costco. I might read 5 a year... maybe, there is lots of other stuff to read, other than "bestseller" stuff. So, 5x5 = 25. 25-20 = 5.
So; I would expect to pay about $1 to get a current best seller downloaded into my reader.
Q.E.D. Th
True, but.. (Score:2)
Re:Pricing (Score:2)
Traditional Dead Trees (Score:3, Interesting)
E-books have their place, though. I'm sure they're much easier to carry. Probably easier to search for text, too. As for archiving, they'll certainly stretch further than any physical shelf space. They don't have pages that tear off, no print that fades in time, no worries of physical damage whatsoever...except for water damage, that is.
In the end, I say let school textbooks go e-book. I'm sure it'll be cheaper that way, and revisions would be more immediate than dead-tree versions. There won't be a book buy-back (so that $5 return on that $80 hardbound won't be there to feed you ramen through the holidays) but at least you'll save on the initial purchase...and you'll need to lug less weight around from class to class.
As far as novels, poems, and other bits of fiction, I'll stick to regular books. There's just something about that page-turning tactile thing that I'd otherwise miss.
Re:Traditional Dead Trees (Score:2)
Hah! "save on the initial purchase" indeed!
You can count on the prices going up, not down, my friend. The genious at the book companies will think, "Tey, we're giving the students t
What's wrong with POT? (Score:3, Informative)
I know, I know, you can't make money putting things in ASCII. My real point is to encourage consumption of Free stuff.
Subtle, huh.
uhm, 2000 books is very few. (Score:2, Informative)
Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org] sports over 13,000 books (these are legal)
if you go to your local alt.binaries.ebooks or just #ebook you can easily double or triple Gutenberg count (my current library has around 30,000 books). Ofcourse would not so legal to download/own as they still would technically be under a copyright. But then, some of the books are easier to download illegaly than to get them at a library (as soon as I found out that my library has Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card
Scary (Score:2)
Why I have purchased dozens of ebooks (Score:5, Insightful)
2) I can get an ebook when I want one. When I want to buy an ebook I am usually not at the book store, but I am near the computer.
3) I can fit many ebooks on my pda - along with music and a few
Not enough selection (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm reading Ian M. Bank's Algebraist currently. Its a huge 700 page hard cover. It is was available in e-book format I would have finished it long ago on my pocketpc. I could have read it easily in bed with the lights off, while waiting for others to arrive at a meeting, in a queue. It is too big, bulky and heavy to cart around, so currently its lying next to my bed, and has been for last 2 weeks.
I really cant understand why Sci-fi authors dont get behind the idea. Its described enough in their novels for them to understand the concept, isn't it?
Surur
Baroque Cycle ebooks (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, I'm surprised at the Luddite "paper forever" attitude that so many people have here on Slashdot -- it's the sort of attitude I'd expect people who still use typewriters and record players to have...
Niche publishing (Score:4, Interesting)
The books are all about 50 to 150 pages, running $5 to $10 each. They're in PDF form without any DRM enabled. We've turned six of them into print books (four in one volume and two others as single volumes). We use the eBook in part as a way to mature the books: buyers get a subscription to the edition and keep getting updates as we add, correct, and update the books.
For instance, I wrote Take Control of Your AirPort Network focusd on Mac Wi-Fi networks. The first edition was about 70 pages. The 1.1 release ballooned to well over 100 pages because I listened to what readers want and added it in. All the buyers of 1.0 got 1.1 for free.
More recently I spend a couple of hours incorporating all of the changes that Apple introduced with the AirPort 4.1 software update (fairly extensive small fixes and improvements). All the 1.0 to 1.1.2 buyers get 1.1.3 for free, too.
It's rewarding for me as an author to get the kind of quick and precise feedback from readers to write better books and then be able to shoot out those books to the original buyers and all new buyers. It's all a good financial return.
Digital to Comfy Conversion? (Score:3, Interesting)
But even though it has received favorable feedback, including from Neil Peart
On the other hand, I also produced PDF formats of various layouts, including the "submission guideline compliant" versions and one that borrows the typography from Jordan's Crown of Swords paperback. But if they print the pages from the PDF, it totals 654 pages. The submissions guideline version is 957 sheets of paper! The total printing cost at Kinko's would be about $40. You would smoke two Epson black ink cartridges, at like $28 each! Trying to print two sides to save paper costs in patience, time and sanity.
What are we supposed to do? I wanted the book to be 'live' in that it could have "services packs
Does Da 'Net have an answer? Some site where you submit a URL to a PDF and $10 on yer credit card and get a gift-wrapped printout shipped to you? Is there any technological fix for this dilemma? Is there any way to get digital verbal content into a lower cost, readable, comfy format for the reader? If not, anyone have a literary agent I can borrow?
StarGlider29a
"You have the right to remain silent... anything you say will be used in my next book..."
PS: You l33tz are smooth enough to figure out what my URL is. So in an attempt to avoid slash-dotting my server, please instead peek at a low overhead, imageless, slash-dot friendlier mirror for the raw (ugly) content: http://www.traffiscope.com/slashdot/mirror/
wetware (Score:2)
Re:wetware (Score:2)
That's real world usability, which eBooks aren't replacing any time. Get your nose out of the webpage and think about reality. Surrender, Dorothy!
Re:wetware (Score:2)
Re:ZipLoc Bags are your friend. (Score:2)
As for Gibson, remember that he's paid to *write* for a living. He's actually paid well, because he's been so prescient, so convincingly self-fulfilling in his prophecies, that people keep buying his books as blueprints for our future. Because he understands people better than he understands technology. FWIW, he missed the "cellphone" in his cyberpunk future. So maybe we're headed for eBoo
Microsloth. Wer du u want 2 go 2day? (Score:2)
In other words, information should be locked down unless Microsoft agrees--after a r
XHTML and long battery life (Score:2)
tofu on osX -- changed my view of reading ebooks (Score:2, Informative)
I have nothing to do with this software. I chanced across it, and I'm surprised at how useful it has proved to be.
eBooks do Work (Score:2, Insightful)
I have been reading the majority of my fiction through ebooks on Pocket PC (using the Peanut Press / ereader reader) for several years now.
I was much the same as many people, in that I thought that losing paper would also take something else away from the experience, and balked at the idea.
But I gave it a go. Originally on a Palm PC many years back, and I now struggle to get through a book on paper. Quite simply, it is too inconvenient.
My book has its own light source. It is lighter than most books.
Bookwarez (Score:2)
Read them on by Tungsten E ($130 cdn) used to read them on my Palm ($30 for a cheap palm.
Rechargeable internal battery is a good idea, you'll go through a lot otherwise.
Same old story (Score:2)
ASCII (Score:4, Informative)
The major problem I see is how to store, index, and search when you have a lot of ebooks from many different publishers. For example there are no standard filename formats to include author and title information, and limitations on filenames also mean you basically want to have some metadata at the head of the document. So a simple standard for an ascii header at the top of a file would be good. This problem is of course much worse if you have different file/reader/compression formats so I am just thinking of ASCII here.
I've bought the same book several times over from my favorite authors over the years. That is dumb but even now my apartment is full of paperbacks and I keep tying them up with string into bundles which I can't get into anymore. I hate throwing away books but it is nuts. So I would like to get credit when I buy something from an author, so I can get a digital file when I buy the book and a copy any time thereafter for free. If I want a printed copy I pay the printing cost. But I should not have to pay 2 or 3 times for the copyright, and I should be able to store and manipulate electronically the text. I should be able to email or post on the web quotations from it, or put passages from it into my word processor.
When I was studying writing in school, I heard that one well known writer (maybe Kurt Vonnegut?) typed the entire text of his favorite writers on his typewriter, to learn how to write well. That seems like a really excellent way to train.
My opinion is that writers are writing for a couple reasons, one maybe is money (though 99% of the time not for more than making a living at it) and the other is to get what you want to say out. Maybe another reason (Heinlein says) is because you are infected with the writer's bug and cannot stop. (Luckily I stopped before I caught it, as you can see by my long, winding posts).
So I think the brief blurb on the inside cover of printed books about how this work may not be electronically copied etc. is complete anachronism and insulting. The point is, in the 21st century you should be able to do that. You should even be able to trade with friends, like you do with books. The part about not publishing it yourself and stealing profit from writers is a separate consideration which is important maybe but not the most important message writers want to send to their readers. So it may not be a popular opinion, but I think that writers should (and some are beginning to) embrace the Net as a way to get more people to know them, and trust their readers. In general this has already I believe been proven to work.
To me, I am most worried about how to maintain a well-organized, perpetual store for my personal digital library, which will not fall apart or become inaccessible as I move between operating systems and computers , will allow me to have both ascii and dvd together, will have some security maybe via an online backup, will let me trade with friends, will let me discover new works, will let me reimburse authors I like, will save me money so I don't have to repurchase dead tree copies, and will let me carry around a few hundred ascii books on my palm's memory stick.
Also I need a good book reader for linux, that is another perpetual quest but the most important thing I think is to achieve some open least common denominator standards and to create open text archives. Authors who don't want to participate can stay out of it, but there are a lot of books not in the bookstore and a lot of authors probably would like to become better known. Personally I have used an ol
Re:A few thoughts and some questions.... (Score:2)
I use Questia [questia.com]. My main goal in using eBooks is research. I use the system to verify references and look up original source material. I like text based ebooks because I can quickly grab quotes and make notations about the things I read.
Researching online turns reading from a passive to an active engagement...so I really am not that annoyed by reading on a computer screen.
I've turned several historians onto the product an
Re:A few thoughts and some questions.... (Score:2)
The ONE (Score:2)
You may not remember, but the primary reason we have such robust Network Interface Cards from a variety of manufacturers today is that there was fierce competition between standards in the early days of networking. NICs were pounded through an evolutionary process and we ended up with a more robust product.
The idea there there should only be one operating system and one chip set led to the dual Intel/Microsoft monopolies. Personally, I think the RISC based processors were following a better design path. Un
Re:First and Goal for Apple (Score:4, Interesting)
In my mind, $80-100 is a good ballpark for such a device, with $150 being the possible ceiling. We're talking about a frickin' book reader here, not an MP3 player. Books take up a couple hundred K, a meg or two at best. You could fit an entire personal library's worth of books in a couple hundred megs of space. Not only that, but unlike music or movies, you generally don't need an accessory to play them (DVD player/TV/stereo, CD player/stereo). If people are going to be paying half what a paper book costs (or even 1/3rd - seems the reality is more like 85% or morethough), and you don't actually get a phyiscal copy, you're not going to be wanting to pay several hundred dollars to read it. There's no cost competition there.
The internals would be quite inexpensive in comparision to the iPod, too, in my mind. It need not hold any internal memory beyond that for the OS: a couple hundred kilobytes, at best. It could have internal memory - 32 Mb or so, I guess. The cost for that much memory would be trivial. It would likely be able to run for months worth of reading off of a couple AA batteries (provided it was using an e-ink screen, or similar/equivilant technology). The processor power would also be trivial, because it only takes a couple dozen megahertz at best to parse a document and display it to a screen (provided the software is well-written). Throw in a simple media port (SD, I guess) and interface port (USB), and you've got expandability and interconnectivity.
Re:First and Goal for Apple (Score:2)
The iPod IS an ebook. It wouldn't take much to make it work. As a matter of fact, people are already using iPods to read text. Check out this sort-of eBook creator [ipodsoft.com], or this iPod ebook creator [ambience.sk].
I'm certain that Apple's IP-conscious designers are making it as difficult as they can to use the iPod as anything nearly like an ebook, but they can only do so much. And someday, non-powered nonvolatile eInk-like screens will be used instead of LCDs, which will make hacking a usable eBook screen a lot easi
Re:First and Goal for Apple (Score:2)
Re:First and Goal for Apple (Score:2)
1. The biggest one is that screen resolution just isn't there yet. Even on my 23" 1920x1200 LCD screen or my 22" 1600x1200 CRT, I still prefer to print out a page. It is easier on the eyes, especially for long times. The problem is 10x worse on a mini screen. I would suffer if I had to read everything on my PDA.
2. Books are
Re:First and Goal for Apple (Score:2)
They already had one, years ago. It was called the Newton [msu.edu].
Back when I was working for ANS - err, UUNet - umm, WorldCom - I would download text files, convert them to Newton Book [poppyware.com] files, upload them to my trusty Newton 2100, and read away. I read The Hacker Crackdown [mit.edu] while taking lunchtime walks, as well as a [irchelp.org] few [faqs.org] RFCs.
The Newton's form factor would still be great for an ebook reader. There's still a small but rabid base of people still writing software for the Newton
So what? (Score:2)