Free Books: Under the Radar 288
bcrowell writes "Remember e-books, anti-books, and print-on-demand books? They didn't pan out. The surprise success story is free books." Of course, this defines "success" as number of readers, not in terms of monetary profits. E-books and their ilk were concentrating on the latter definition, rather than the former. Still, it's good to see free books preferred in some circles based on their merit, and not just the cost.
business model (Score:2, Funny)
2. ?
3. PROFIT!!!
Re:business model (Score:5, Interesting)
1. free books
2. free books act as gateway drug for non-free ebooks.
3. PROFIT!!!
It happened to me. When paperbacks started costing > 9 dollars, I stopped buying them. It hurt to decrease my favorite entertainment, but with my scifi/fantasy appetite of 2-4 paperbacks a weekend, I just couldn't afford it.
Then I heard fictionwise [fictionwise.com] was giving away hugo and nebula award nominees. How could I resist? I downloaded them all. After spending a happy hour tweaking Weasel Reader [sourceforge.net], I settled in with my Palm to devour some words.
I was like the recovered junky, who, having one hit, falls deep into addiction again. But I still wasn't going to pay 9 bucks for a paperback, or worse, the same amount for an ebook. I trolled Project Gutenberg, Baen, OReilly look for a good read. That held off the monkey on my back for a little while. Still I needed more. So I went back to fictionwise, credit card in hand, looking for my fix. I discovered that unlike some ebookstores (cough,cough Peanut Press [palmdigitalmedia.com]) not all ebooks were overpriced, DRM'd e-versions of last years NYT bestseller list. fictionwise has TONS of great novels cheap. Real cheap. In text format. Did I mention cheap? And even better: novellas, short stories, serials, all manner of quickie escapism that fit perfectly into the time it takes to ride the bus, or watch your clothes dry.
So now I'm hooked on cheapie short stories from fictionwise. On Friday nights I used to go down to the Blockbuster and rent 9 dollars worth of DVDs for my weekend entertainment. Now I spend a fun hour browsing an ebookstore, and for 4 dollars (0.30 - 1.50 each) I download a half-dozen good stories to fill my free time.
Re:business model (Score:4, Funny)
When paperbacks started costing > 9 dollars, I stopped buying them. It hurt to decrease my favorite entertainment, but with my scifi/fantasy appetite of 2-4 paperbacks a weekend, I just couldn't afford it.
Dude... haven't you got a library? The original source of free books...
In the beginning... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:In the beginning... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In the beginning... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In the beginning... (Score:3, Funny)
needs to rewrite accounting for OS X/Darwin (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In the beginning... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm, so God has a command line. I wonder if he asked Mel to write it in Fortran [utah.edu].
Re:In the beginning... (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you actually read it, or did you just skim through? It seems as if you read the beginning and the ending, missing everything in between.
What you say he wrote is false. He doesn't think a cool operating system is an end in itself, nor does he say that absolute control of a program is the dominent goal. You imply that he failed to see that most people just want to get the work done, whereas it is his whole point all along. You portray him as someone who has made one definitive choice, which is wrong - at the time of writing, it seems he was using Linux, Windows NT and BeOS, having abandoned Macs a few years before.
Folks have different goals, and contrary to what you say, he sees that very well. I now wonder what your goal is? Are you genuinely mislead by a quick skim, or are you a most subtle troller? The only valid point you make, and which I repeat here is was worth reading. Very true.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Free/E Not the problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Free/E Not the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand I agree with you. Computers are a great way to make text AVAILABLE but a rotten way to display it for reading. For resolution and ease on the eyes print still rules.
Re:Free/E Not the problem (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Free/E Not the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Free/E Not the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the issue, isn't it. But what will happen the day when there are screen that are as comfortable to read from as books? Clearly this is only a matter of time. Maybe not soon, but it is bound to happen.
Then what?
Especially in education there will probably be a substantial increase in free literature. Especially in basic subjects there will be excellent free alternatives available.
For mainstream books the issue is more thorny. Naively you would think that publishing houses will loose all their power, and that authors started letting peope download their stuff at rates much, much lower than what would be paid for the book in a store. For some reason though, this did not happen to music. I wonder if publishing houses are as powerful and united as RIAA...
Tor
Re:Free/E Not the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Some key features of reading on the palm:
1. Easy to always have with you. Palm fits in your pocket, paper back will not. Knock off a chapter in line at wall-mart.
2. Back-light: Read in the dark without keeping anyone else up.
3. Bookmark/Annotate: Look stuff up later, never loose your place.
4. Very easy to hold in one hand and turn pages. Try that with a paperback.
5. Download now means at 4am if I finish a book, I can download another one right away.
6. Easy to share.
7. Search.
I am very much sick of hearing people knock reading on the palm (or eBooks in general) becuase "The Paper Book is the perfect interface." I have to reply with a resounding, "NOT!" I read a lot, every day. And since starting to read on the Palm, I always prefer it to paper.
Please do *NOT* assume when someone says they are reading an eBook that they are sitting in front of a 21inch monitor in an office building. Picture me, in a lean-to on the side of Mount Washington, reading a little Mark Twain at 2am becuase I can't get to sleep.
M@
Teachers Pay Attention (Score:3, Insightful)
BRUCE ECKEL! (Score:5, Informative)
I, personally, own a copy of Thinking in Java and Thinking in C++, and recommend it to all Java/C++ programmers. Check it out on the website, and buy a copy if you like it.
More books. (Score:3, Informative)
Eckel gets it.
Here's more gratis books. Site 1 [upenn.edu] | Site 2 (Math) [gatech.edu]
Re:BRUCE ECKEL! (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, I must say that I have several e-books on my Visor and that works out just great when I go to lunch and want to read something while I eat. But I certainly wouldn't want to try to relax in bed at night while trying to read that tiny print on a dark screen. So I think what we have here is the idea of a new technology which is still valid, but the implementation of that technology hasn't caught up with the idea. Give me a cheap e-book reader the size and weight of a paperback book with high quality fonts on a readable background with enough memory to hold a couple dozen books and e-books would be seriously take off!
Baen Free Library (Score:5, Informative)
. Book publishers like Baen and O'Reilly, however, have found that they can increase sales of their printed books by giving away the digital versions for free. This has also been my own experience with my self-published physics textbooks. It's cheap marketing: readers can browse the digital book to see if it's something they want, and if they like it, they're willing to pay for the convenience of a printed copy.
Strangely, the author fails to link to the Baen Free Library: http://www.baen.com/library/ [baen.com]
It's funny. Publishers are starting to get what Microsoft has known for a while. 'Piracy' is in reality free advertising. Why don't the record companies and movie studios get it?
Re:Baen Free Library (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because there is nothing to be gained by buying a copy of movie or a song after pirating it, whereas for software you buy it for upgrades or tech support and for books you buy it so that you can hold it in your hands instead of reading on the computer screen. If the record and movie companies provided free low quality copies of their works, they might be able to use this to get people to buy them in high quality formats. But, as it stands now, the quality of a downloaded song or movie is good enough that people don't seem to think its worth buying it for the quality increase.
Re:Baen Free Library (Score:3, Insightful)
By this same logic, most people who can download books can print them pretty cheaply if they don't use a laser printer. Upgrades can be just as easily pirated as original software.
You're right about the tech support thing about software. You don't get a nice cover or dust jacket with a downloaded book, either, and have to keep it bound in notebook.
By the same token, if you downloaded 'Lord of the Rings' on the internet, you didn't get extras like trailers, directors' comments, animated interactive menus, mini-posters, etc... When you buy a CD you get a lot of the same stuff. CD's are a bad example, though, because the Music industry is trying as hard as it can to give as little to their customers as they can get away with.
For a better example, when the Hellsing anime was released in Japan, I downloaded fansubs of the show online. When it was released in the U.S., I bought the DVD. Inside the Vol2. DVD, I got a cool miniposter of Alucard and Cellas, a post card, and a really neat Hellsign sew-on/iron-on patch.
Re:Baen Free Library (Score:2, Interesting)
It depends on the book. For most books, it is not possible to print it yourself at a price lower than what it costs at a bookstore. For instance, a paperback novel at $7 is cheaper than the paper and ink cartridges you'd need to pay for to print it on an inkjet printer. Also, if you print it yourself, you're getting an inferior product: it's single-sided, and it's not bound.
The main exception I'm aware of is overpriced college textbooks. For example, my own free textbook [lightandmatter.com] is aimed at a market (introductory physics without calculus) where the standard price is $120. The price of do-it-yourself printing is more like $60, and it's no coincidence that if you buy a [rinted copy of my 6-volume set from me, the price adds up to a little more than $60.
Re:Baen Free Library (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, there is a difference between reading and audio. People don't want to get monitor eyestrain from pleasure reading, and a printed book is usually quite portable. Putting a book out for free will entice a user to purchase the physical copy, for the aforementioned benefits, whereas the same cannot be said for MP3s, which suffer little loss in fidelity or functionality in the trip from
Personally, I still wouldn't give the whole book away, I'd pull an Orson Scott Card [hatrack.com]and post the first three chapters online to hook in readers.
Re:Baen Free Library (Score:4, Insightful)
Three chapters might be enough for Orson Scott Card, who already has a fairly large following, but it certainly isn't enough for authors that are less well known. Besides, why be stingy? If you aren't going to put the whole book up on the Internet what does it hurt to put nearly all of the book on the Internet? You still have to buy the book to find out how it ends, and no one is likely to read 80% of a book and then not finish it.
The folks at Baen aren't stupid. Most sci-fi/fantasy novels nowadays are actually part of a series, and Baen isn't giving away any series in its entirety. I have bought several books from them from authors I had never heard of because I liked the books I was able to read for free.
I actually prefer reading on my Visor, and I refuse to buy encrypted ebooks, and that means that baen.com and fictionwise.com are getting the lion's share of my book dollars.
They do get it, they have a different agenda (Score:3, Interesting)
For the MPAA, I think it is different as the barriers to entry are pretty high for motion pictures. They don't like their own DVD products cutting into theature box office, so maybe they really are more concerned with piracy. At current bandwidth, I'd be surprised if P2P style exchanges are really that big of a problem for them, but mass produced grey market sales of actual discs probably is. They should be able to attack this problem without pissing off customers with restrictive DRM, but they seem to be heading down the wrong path.
You gotta love it... (Score:2, Interesting)
I have to admit I take a certain joy in seeing that a whole book on fields is a mere 3 Meg download.
cool, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think many are missing the point. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, and that is the incentative!
It's frustrating seeing all these objections to the format. Much of the point of these free books is to get people hooked and get them to buy the real thing, right? Right?
It's not dead-tree _versus_ electronic. It's dead-tree _in addition to_ electronic. That's the key.
The electronic version; cheap, not as comfortable to read, good for searching/citing.
dead-tree version; expensive, very comfortable to read, not made for searching, looks good on shelf.
See how they complement each other?
I love the free books out there. I think it's brilliant. I've read Eckels material and I've recommended it to many many people based on the "check out the electronic version". I hope he's doing well.
The format issue notwithstanding, one great point is reader interaction and feedback. Publishing during the drafting period seems like a good way to get extra proofing and feedback, which makes for a better product, and better products sell more (music excepted :-o)
Free Universes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Free Universes (Score:3, Insightful)
Many writers feel very passionately about their settings, their characters, and their hard work. As an unpublished writer, I cringe every time people come up with an non-cannonical version of this, that, or the other thing - totally ruining the vision of characters, places, and events simply because the author didn't take the time to do his research.
With that said, however - the concept (if you could make it work, and enforce integrity) of free universes is appealing in that the story, and your characters live on after either you have died, or have moved on to other things.
Re:Free Universes (Score:4, Interesting)
Aside from fanfic with its dubious legal status and contention with "canon", there is one example of this very idea which Slashdot readers may be familiar with: the Cthulhu Mythos [tripod.com].
The Mythos was begun by H. P. Lovecraft, who encouraged his fans to write stories in his settings. (There was little audience for the horror-SF genre at the time, and every good story was a boon to its popularity.) After Lovecraft's death, and to the present day, followers have continued to write and publish stories featuring Lovecraft's strange gods and cosmic horrors.
Like more commercially produced shared settings such as Star Trek, the Mythos and associated tales have spawned movies, magazines, and even a roleplaying game [chaosium.com].
Sad to say, Lovecraft died in obscurity and poverty, which does not say much for starting a freely expandable universe as a means of employment. Nonetheless, it has certainly been a success in terms of storytelling.
(Lovecraft was by no means the only author who has invited fans to write in his universe. Another, rather more recently, told his readers to go ahead and write stories in his universe -- and then rescinded the offer after a fan wrote a story that offended him! The author in question was Larry Niven; the universe was Known Space; the fan was Elf Sternberg; the story was "The Only Fair Game" [drizzle.com].)
ok so its not free but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, I think this is a good compromise, in the same way that if artists sold their cd's online for a reasonabele amount of money, people would be less tempted to pirate their respective work.
Re:ok so its not free but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ok so its not free but... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's nice to see the new books come out and decide if I want to get them... But mainly I use the service as a reference... I can access the site anywhere, so if I am on a customer's site and need to look up something, it's pretty easy to jump in..
I keep several slots free just for this reason, I can pick whatever book I need at the time.
Good service, though I would like a bit better user interface.
Re:ok so its not free but... (Score:3, Informative)
However, they also seem to be contributing to this disturbing trend of ``un-freeing'' free books. This book [theassayer.org] used to be free at the author's web page [chalmers.se]. If you click on the link, you'll find that it no longer exists. The book is no longer free, and you can only get the electronic version through Safari.
Interesting Cathedral. (Score:2)
I appear to have made a vast mistake when reading and interpreting Mr. Raymond's work - it was my impression that his 'Cathedral' metaphor was used to describe closed, proprietary software design similar to Microsoft's, not Stallman's GPL'd design method. Was I wrong? Or is the author wrong?
Re:Interesting Cathedral. (Score:2, Offtopic)
"Rhinophytonecrophilia" comes to mind.
Re:Interesting Cathedral. (Score:2)
Re:Interesting Cathedral. (Score:2, Insightful)
The GPL is not a design method it is license. How one actually develops the project might be the author's point. Closed shop development can produce a GPL'd product. Also, it might just be the notion of control of a project - is it rigid (hierarchical) or flexible (very flat).
I got the feeling that the author is pointing out how an INDIVIDUAL can produce a great product (like his textbooks) if he has access to royalty-free information that he can use in his own work.
Note how the author points out Raymond's use of the cathedral approach to write his popular book. Essentially that was Raymond ALONE producing a work. Likewise, Stallman with EMACS - on his own but using other's work as well.
Look at this quote:
"The failure of the bazaar model with free books might not seem surprising, since to most people it sounds like the silly party game where each person takes a turn adding more onto a story. We normally assume that an author has a unique voice, and that authorship can't be delegated."
I really think his point is that lots of people editing, revising, adding chapters, fixing, etc. doesn't apply as well to books...except in the case of technical documentation.
For example, an author who has a particular teaching method and writing style that he wants to consistently use across chapters will not (and should not) be open to others messing with his text outside of the purely technical side of things. The end result though can be something that is free for all to change, edit, etc.
I like the author's approach because creativity usually means the artist/author/etc. realizes his own ideas in the form of the project. Projects that are not purely technical may not be best done with bazaar like methods. Too many chefs spoil the broth
Basically, realize your own project goals and then allow others to benefit as they want from them.
Re:Interesting Cathedral. (Score:2, Insightful)
To quote ESR's paper:I don't see how this can possibly be interpreted as Proprietary == Cathedral. There are plenty of other hints that it's Linux == Bazaar, GNU == Cathedral.
Probably most proprietary software is also cathedral, simply due to small number of developers with eyes on the code, but there are organisations which have large enough development teams that they could possibly run a project bazaar-style without opening it up outside the organisation.
Self-publishing and book thumbing. (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as e-books go, they've been promising that we'll have everything on microfiche since the 60's, and that the book is dead. Until I can read a book online and be able to find a subject quickly by "thumbing" though the book, there will always be room for paper books.
Orson Scott Card on free books... (Score:5, Interesting)
Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game) has posted a copy of his short story Angles for free on his website [hatrack.com]. He also wrote an interesting piece [hatrack.com] about copyright back in May of this year. An interesting quote:
He also routinely puts up the first few chapters of his books online, before they're published so you can get a taste of them before buying. I'm surprised more people don't have this attitude.e-boooks will work (Score:5, Insightful)
Pdas at $500 with tiny screens to read on won't do. Sure there are pluses to them, reading in total darkness is cool, it makes you more "attuned" to what you are reading (less distractions around for your eyes to wander). But they are not for everyone. And reading them on your large computer screen sucks for various reasons, posture is not inteneded for reading for one. ITs ok for manuals and on line help, beacuse you are using the program at the same time, but -at lest for me- ebooks? nah.
Free ebooks are another thing altogether. You download them cos they're free, and to "build up" an elibrary, it doesn't mean you actually read them all. Eg: I d/l all Verne's books and only reread 2000 leagues, and Journey, I have a jornada i use almost solely as a contacts and ebook reader.
What use are ebooks? (Score:4, Insightful)
It fits comfortably in hand, requires no power, can be stored in a large pocket or small backpack, and its cheap enough that if it gets lots, you don't care, I can loan it to my friends if I want, I can throw it away, I can store it on a shelf, virtually indestructable, theft resistant and it requires no electricity to use. I can even use it in the hot tub or swimming pool, and it if gets wet, well, when you dry it out, it usually pretty usable. Its perfect packaging for the human animal.
So if I have a reader for my ebook, I'm getting a fragile device that will have DRM built into it, will require electricity, and will be difficult to read.
Rather than try to improve one of the perfect human inventions (the paperback book), why not work on something useful like a good, cheap DVD player for linux?
Re:What use are ebooks? (Score:3, Interesting)
As does a pda.
can be stored in a large pocket or small backpack
As can a PDA. The difference being I can carry a bookshelf worth of books in my pocket.
and its cheap enough that if it gets lots, you don't care
I'll give the advantage there to books on paper as opposed to pda. But if something's valuable to me I'm not going to lose it.
So if I have a reader for my ebook, I'm getting a fragile device
I've been carrying around my ipaq in my pocket for about two years now, and it's never gotten so much as a scratch from the wear in a tiny case. While I don't get out as much as I'd like, I'm in woods and parks enough that I'd hardly call it fragile. Heck, it's lasted longer than my rice cooker.
that will have DRM built into it
I admit that part I'm not so fond of. While it dosn't make it any more legal, I usually just buy the paperback and download the ebook from a binary group. I wouldn't mind the DRM angle so much, but the publishing of ebooks is so sporatic that I'll often find a series with only a couple books of it in ebook form.
will require electricity
Not significant enough to really matter for me at least. I usually get about a seven to ten hour charge if reading under good lighting, and in low or dark light I wouldn't have been able to read it at all. Four rechargeable double A bateries are enough to just about double the time as well for long trips, so all in all it's a slight advantage in my opinion.
nd will be difficult to read.
A lot of people have good eyesight
Re:What use are ebooks? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your points about paperbacks are good - don't get me wrong. It is just that I do not carry a paperback book around with me, (and probably won't) - but I will always have my PDA. And therein lies the rub: even a two minute wait for a bus or a ride is not too short a time to read. I suppose what a person would need to match the convenience of what I have is a belt pouch - paperback size. That would be as handy as my current rig. But some of those paperbacks are pretty thick - and you thought the PDA sized belt pouch looked goofy.
The other benefit of the electronic book is freshness. Fresh paper costs money, but downloads are (essentially) free. And as long as people publish in
Definition of "book" (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Definition of "book" (Score:2)
BookCrossing (Score:5, Interesting)
From the site: "What is BookCrossing, you ask? It's a global book club that crosses time and space. It's a reading group that knows no geographical boundaries. Do you like free books? How about free book clubs?. Well, the books our members leave in the wild are free... but it's the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing. Book trading has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a book exchange of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind."
Philip Greenspun books (Score:2, Informative)
His Travels With Samantha [photo.net] was one of the first online free books ever, circa 1992-3. Later, he wrote the stupendous book on web publishing, Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing [photo.net] with his samoyed, Alex.
Two very good reads by a very good writer. Sorry, I know some people don't like Philip and this isn't flamebait -- I truly admire many of his initiatives, like the free Remindme and Clickthrough services, in addition to the remarkable photo.net which has grown enormous tentacles nowadays. Both books are intimately related to those efforts.
Free Books have been (Score:2, Insightful)
Project Gutenberg (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sonny Bono killed Project Gutenberg (Score:3, Interesting)
O'Reilly (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I kinda with I had my $40, but I was glad in the end to have paid for it. Kudos to O'Reilly, Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet for doing it, like I need another reason to like O'Reilly. I hope examples like these will encourage others to do the same, after all, free software can be close to useless without documentation.
Nice idea, but (Score:5, Insightful)
While I have never depended on a "publisher to make an editorial decision," I do depend on my friends & get most of my recommendations from folks who only turn on a PC to check e-mail. This resulted in my dropping over $100 yesterday, alone on stuff such as Dylan Thomas, Bukowski, Pratchett, Le Guin, Naipail, and Hardy. Many of these are copyrighted classics that won't be available online for another 75+ years and all are well worth paying $7-35 for a lifetime of enjoyment. Yes, they'll sit on my shelf and represent killed trees, but the electricity required to power my PC long enough was probably generated with coal that will shorten the lives of even more trees and people as well. My library, on the other hand, is passed around to all my interested friends and family, a warm, physical, and comforting way to share enjoyment of the greatest poetry and prose. As with all great electronic innovations, "free" online books bypass the enjoyable interpersonal element, be it of sharing a story or chatting with the librarian.
Yes, there could be some great literature online & maybe someday I'll find something work getting a headache to read. For now, however, I'm content with a system that ain't broke; the bookstore when I've got the money and the library when I don't.
Re:Nice idea, but (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice idea, but (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a silly thing to say, since by reading only published books you are in fact doing precisely that. Where do you think your friends get their book leads? Talking to author agents at book conventions and trolling through publishers' slush piles? How many unpublished manuscripts have you read? Ever? It is even harder to get one of those in bound form than free and online.
-renard
The Honorverse Disk (Score:5, Interesting)
War of Honor is the tenth Honor Harrington book by David Weber. It includes a CD in the back of the book that contains the full text of all of the Honor Harrington books in HTML and a couple of eBook formats. The license printed on the CD is interesting and short.
The publisher, Baen Books, has made much of its backlist available [baen.com] for free on the web. It pays. Readers get interested in the online stories, then a significant percentage want and buy printed copies.Definition of success. (Score:3, Insightful)
I define the success of a book as whether people enjoyed it or not.
Of course if it is $0 it will have lots of downloads
Please, lets try to be a bit more scientific around here!
Interesting topic but the cited article is weak. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can tell the article is weak since everyone posting is posting about the ideas and not about the content of the link!
Maybe I am old fashioned (Score:5, Insightful)
I like sitting by the lamp at night with a book. The print is readable, the smell of the book helps put me into the mood and settles me in. The act of turning the pages further engrosses me in the moment.
My daughter totally loves the idea of printed books. She is just starting to learn how to read and is fascinated by the paper books. She signs her name in the front cover of every book as a ritual.
Now I know TV replaced radio in a lot of ways. I know color replaced black and white. However I do not see e-books taking over anything for the simple fact they are LESS useful, not more. Perhaps in the case of manuals and installation instructions, but never in the case of a novel.
People touting e-books seem to come off as "nonreaders" to me. They think of the content only and not the experience as a whole. I love books, you wont see me reading PDF's unless I have too. I don't mind paying for a book.
Re:Maybe I am old fashioned (Score:3, Interesting)
Who said anything about PDFs?
I like sitting by the lamp at night with a Handspring. The print is readable, the glow of the backlight helps put me into the mood and settles me in. The act of clicking the down button further engrosses me in the moment.
My monkey totally loves the idea of electronic books. She is just starting to learn how to read and is fascinated by the infinite texts accessible through one hand-sized unit. She annotates every text with her responses as a ritual.
Now I know TV hasn't replaced radio in a lot of ways. I know black and white is still printed far more often than colour. However I do not see print books persisting for fiction in the long term for the simple fact they are LESS useful, not more. You can't grep a print book or annotate it and share your thoughts on the web. Perhaps in the case of textbooks with diagrams and complex instructions, but never in the case of a novel.
People dismissing e-books seem to come off as "non-e-book-readers" to me. They think of the format only and not the experience as a whole. I love books, you'll see me browsing Fictionwise [fictionwise.com] regularly. I don't mind paying for an e-book.
links (Score:2, Informative)
Forget e-novels; where are the e-reference books? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's this guy smoking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux was in 1999 (I don't know how it is today) the most widely used server operating system on the internet.
Apache is the top web server.
PHP has surpassed ASP in terms of number of users and is now the most widely used server side scripting language.
Sendmail is the leading email server (over, for example, Microsoft Exchange).
OpenSSH is the Internet's most widely used implementation of SSH.
Granted, some of these may never have pushed anything other than other OSS/FS products out of first place (such as Apache, whose predecessor was the NCSA web server), but aren't there a gazillion other examples anyway? I have a hard time taking anyone who makes such bold assertions, without even trying to first evaluate them, seriously.
Why I like to write free web books (Score:5, Insightful)
People always seem to be at their best when in small groups. The internet has the positive affect of cutting out the middleman and in some cases, perhaps slows down globalization (sometimes a good thing, but usually not - globalization tends to hurt people in developing countries who have the least).
It is a great feeling to publish a real physical book, but I have found that I have had to make at least two compromises with the traditional publishing process, mainly:
- constrained to write about popular subjects
- books that get out of date technologically are still sold (for many of my published books, I really liked them when they were fresh, but 4 or 5 years later, they seemed really dated, but were still being sold)
Anyway, when writing free web books, an author (like me!) can choose topics that are interesting but niche. I beg for small donations for my free web books, and I am pleasantly surprised at the amount of donations that I receive (currently, I get 3 or 4 cents per download, on the average, in donations).I am working on a third free web book (The Software Design Book), so I do believe in this process.
-Mark
About reading e-books from monitors (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:About reading e-books from monitors (Score:3, Insightful)
link (Score:4, Informative)
It's not much of a collection right now, but the quality level is high. Especially good is 'How to Think Like a Computer Scientist', a good introduction to programming that lives up to the title. It covers several languages.
350 and growing (Score:2, Interesting)
Why I'm not big on ebooks (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, some people may like it. But that's why a free market is so great. You can use what you like. I also learned in a technical writing class that reading from a computer screen is 25% slower than reading from a book. My own experience tells me this is true as well.
Re:Why I'm not big on ebooks (Score:3, Insightful)
Tho an ebook is more useful than hardcopy when I'm trying to find some term that's not in the index, or when I need to clip a passage to quote to someone else.
eBooks (Score:4, Interesting)
slashdotted (Score:4, Interesting)
Consider the Dover-Gutenberg connection. (Score:5, Informative)
So how's that affecting Dover's business (Dover produces no new titles, apart from original translations of non-copyrighted work)? They're booming. [corporate-ir.net]
Heck, with those sort of results, Dover ought to be providing financial support for PG (or at least releasing edited/translated titles into the public domain). Though I guess I'll settle for that nice brief [eldred.cc] they filed in Eldred's behalf.
Slight disclaimer here, Dover was bought by a big printing company that's really helped them with distribution (just came back from the beach and all the little bookstores there were well-stocked with Dover thrifts), but every other publisher on the planet has seen sales fall [reviewsnews.com], while Dover's sales, since the acquisition, have grown tremendously.
free books (Score:2, Interesting)
It has some great books there, although some may be outdated
May be over-stating the success (Score:3, Interesting)
at least two of [these free books] [4] [biophysics.org],[5] seem to be the standard textbooks in their field today
Reference 4 is by no means the standard textbook in the field of biophysics. I've been in the field for at least 6 years and this is the first I've heard of this book. None of my professors have ever mentioned it either.
Microsoft can't just say, "Romeo and Juliet was a big success for Shakespeare, so we'll write something similar."
Doesn't this happen all the time? Isn't West Side Story just Romeo and Juliet again? Isn't any star-crossed lover movie that women flock and drag their men to a remake of Romeo and Juliet? Wasn't the Leonardo DiCrapio remake an embraced and extended version of R&J?
Books, however, are easy to use, and most computer users know how to use an electronic book that is in the ubiquitous (and nonproprietary) Adobe Acrobat format.
Isn't pdf proprietary?
Finally, a story on free literature that doesn't link the asstr [asstr.org] is not complete by any means :)
Community Writing (Score:3, Informative)
The best I can think of is Everything [everything2.com]. I spend many hours reading the stuff there every week. Though it cannot be called an encyclopedia by any stretch of imagination, I've found it to be a very valuable source of general contemporary info.
Then there's the Encyclopedia Mythica [pantheon.org].
Someone just mentioned Project Gutenberg too. It's a community effort that's coming out very well indeed. I know that it's not not community authorship, but a community effort.
There are many more counter-examples I can provide. Hell, even the usenet archives are a very useful source of info sometimes.
Community writing should not be written off (pardon the pun) lightly.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Free Book Links (Score:2, Informative)
Perseus Project [tufts.edu]
Great Books Index [mirror.org]
The Internet Classics Archive [mit.edu]
Bartleby [bartleby.com]
Enjoy these free reads. They are the greatest books ever written.
O'Reilly Safari (Score:3, Interesting)
That sounds exactly like Safari (which I am currently a member of). The {} may or may not apply. The only digital rights management there exists is that which will make it very inconvenient to say print the entire book out. I believe Safari is a success and does not include only O'Reilly books. It is a lot cheaper than buying a book, for access to a few.
The best of the free I've read... (Score:2)
Wizard's Bane, Compiled, and Cursed are all available online.
They're stories about a normal guy who is transported using magic to a fantasy world where he's the man because he's an excellent programmer.
Mix of my favorite genre's - fantasy and computers. He brings up TLAs (three letter acronyms), R2D2, the power of caffiene, the dragon book (for compiler writers), a spell called "hello world," emacs, and a lot of other funny stuff I can't remember. And it all seems to fit (not just puns thrown in there for their own sake, like the often-criticized Xanth books).
Now I REALLY want to go buy the next three.
Free as in irony (Score:2, Funny)
'Underground' Under the Radar? (Score:2, Informative)
Going somewhere. Not far, but not nowhere. (Score:2, Interesting)
Free books are a good idea, but will face the same struggle as OSS, primarily because of the monopolies already existing. MS we all know about, but how many of you good people here tonight know the extent of the Bertelsmann firm's media dominance? It's the only Big Six corp not to have a key US TV outlet, and that (AFAIK) is because the US has laws to make sure all US TV is by American corporations, and Bertelsmann is German.
To cut a long story short, the Big Corps will do anything and everything to wipe out "free books", or at the very least, prevent their gaining a significant market share. In terms of styles of books, the mass markets will be catered for, so free books will fill the unprofitable/undesirable topics that publishers will not touch. They will also be quite a few people releasing books for free as a statement, like the morons who struggle to use Linux just because its "cool", aparrently. Finally, the genuineley intelligent books whose authors really are in it for the spirit of it, the virtually unread minority, drowned under the crapflooders whose crap has no profit for the big publishing houses and no worth to the independent publishers.
In short, this could, and hopefully will, be a force for good in the literature arena. Until the lawyers move in...
Ali
Free books might mean more money for small writers (Score:2, Insightful)
I have known authors of niche type books and have learned from them that they make exceptionally small amounts of money on the sale of these books. Specifically, I am talking about the PhD candidate who turns his thesis over to a publisher. Here's an example of this: The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1994 [amazon.com]. This was a book written by my professor.
Getting back to my point, though, I believe that he would probably make more money today posting that entire book on the web for free and putting up a paypal tip jar than he would by going through a publisher or attempting subsidy publishing.
There are a lot of content sites out there using this method and, when you cut out the agent, the publisher, the printer, the retailer, and all the other middlemen, direct sales based on paypal type donations might be the way to go (please spare me on the evils of paypal, you know I mean the concept of micropayments.)
ebooks -- been reading them for years now (Score:5, Interesting)
I dunno about the rest of you, but I wasn't going to buy a rocketbook or any of the others so that I could pay a bunch of money to download books over a slow-as-molasses modem. Why the heck can't I download them over my broadband connection to my PC and maintain my own library? And I wasn't going to buy books that I could only read on my PC, which I don't happen to be sitting in front of at any time when I want to be reading books.
I want to read books wherever I am, like you'd be able to do with a dedicated ebook reader, but I don't want to pay for or carry around a dedicated ebook reader.
As it turns out, I've been carrying a portable computer since early 1997 - a palm. So why not use that? The screen is small, but I always have it with me, and its print is really not all that much smaller than a lot of paperbacks anyway.
I thought that was a natural fit. I started reading ebooks on it in I think 1998, but certainly by the end of 1999. Back then there were only a few places you could get them, and peanutpress was the only place I could get contemporary stuff from well-known authors (plus the peanut reader did a very nice display job given the limitations of the device).
Since that time the number of ebook vendors has exploded. I still can't get them from Barnes and Noble or Amazon in a palm reader format (isn't it interesting that both support Microsoft's format but neither supports the much more popular palm reader format) but there has been an explosion of free and commercial ebook services serving the palmtop market. My current favorite is fictionwise.
Anyway, my point in all of this is that ebooks are selling commercially and have been selling for years. Not on high volumes, but I wonder if that's not because of the failure of the large booksellers to target the largest of the palmtop markets. The smaller vendors have existed for years and are obviously doing something right given that they're still around and their inventories are exploding, but they don't have the marketing push to really get ebooks out there.
Whatever, ebooks really are here if you want them and most likely you don't have to buy anything extra to read them.
Ebooks rule! (at least for research) (Score:3, Informative)
For example, I wanted to quote that great pseudo-riddle from Lewis Carroll -- "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" But which Alice book did it come from? In two minutes I found both text files at Gutenberg, searched for "raven", and there it was. (The Mad Hatter came up with it, in _Alice in Wonderland_. )
The Internet is, IMO, the best free ebook--it sure is the biggest. Unlike dead tree books, you get a wide choice of search engines. Of course, you can pick up a lot of weird stuff there too. So, surf safely--I myself always wear a condom.
Problem w/ reading books pdf format (Score:3, Informative)
Until then, the thing to do is offer books in pdf and html format. PDF to print out. HTML to read on the computer, which will allow you to change font settings and sizes to your preference, making it easier to read.
No e-books, no divx (Score:4, Insightful)
People would always rather get something for free than have to pay for it; and they'd always rather have the rights laid out according to the FSF than not have those rights.
But people will pay for books. We've been doing that forever, since the beginning of this nation. But when people pay for books, they expect certain rights; the right to read as often as they like, to loan, to mark-up, to give away, to take quotes from, to put in a library, etc. Until e-books give people all the same rights they have with regular paper-back books, they will not catch on.
Asking people to buy e-books as they currently exist is like saying "why don't you pay me 30,000 dollars for the same Ford except that you can't loan it to anyone, modify it, etc etc". People aren't going to buy into this bullshit.
What should happen is that when we buy a paper-back book, we should get access to an e-book automatically, and have the same rights to utilize the e-book as we would the paper-back book.
The reason why free-books online are catching on is because they offer the consumers all the same rights they'd have with paper-back books.
Re:No e-books, no divx (Score:3, Insightful)
Asking people to buy e-books as they currently exist is like saying "why don't you pay me 30,000 dollars for the same Ford except that you can't loan it to anyone, modify it, etc etc". People aren't going to buy into this bullshit.
It's not so much that I can't lend them; the Palm Reader format that I most often get books in uses a credit card to unlock the book. I can give it away, but I have to either type in or give away the credit card with it. That immediately restricts the number of copies that will get made, and of course if the thing gets massively given away they can track it back to me. This is a pretty effective and simple means of DRM, and yet it does give me much of the flexibility of paper in terms of lending.
I don't mind that at all.
What I mind is when they charge me $20 for a contemporary novel, same price as the hardcover book, and all I'm getting is bits. That drives me nuts. I think if they're not going to have to pay to print and ship it, I ought to benefit from the distribution cost savings.
There are some good arguments as to why that won't make them really cheap (much of the cost of producing most books is in the preprint production) but if you're offering in both formats there should be a discount for ebooks. On the other hand, I'm obviously an early adopter and there is infrastructure to pay for.
I find that these days it's likely that a title bought in ebook format will indeed be a couple of bucks less money than a paper one, and shipping is free. Unfortunately availability of new titles is still very limited, although vastly better now than even one year ago.
Ebooks are happening, even commercial ebooks, even though they are not yet mainstream. They still have their limitations relative to paper, but the convenience of the format (I regularly carry three or more in my PDA, whereas you'd be lucky to find me with even one paper book) is worth quite a bit. No more reading the National Enquirer in checkout lines.
Bizaar at one level, Cathedral at another (Score:4, Interesting)
[...]
The bazaar model seems to have been almost a complete failure in the world of free books, although not for want of trying. Tellingly, The Cathedral and the Bazaar was itself written cathedral-style by Raymond. He has also started a bazaar-style book project, The Art of Unix Programming[7], which appears to be languishing.
[...]
The failure of the bazaar model with free books might not seem surprising
This depends largely on where one draws the line between bizzar and cathedral, or put another way, with what granularity one considers a project or body of work. The Star Trek and Star Wars universes are examples where there is a large body of Cathedralesque work, as well as an even larger body of "fan fiction." While many stories (perhaps most) are themselves written by a single author (as, in fact, my own (soon-to-be released under a free license) novel [expressivefreedom.org] has been), the overall, net effect of the body of work which comprises the fan fiction of the Star Trek and Star Wars universes (and undoubtably other settings as well) is in many ways more remeniscent of the Bizzar than a Cathedral approach. The Linux kernel is a bizzar-type project, yet within that kernel are modules and subsystems that are quite 'cathedralesque' in how they were managed and written.
The definition in many ways becomeds one of granularity, and while I agree with much the article writes, I think the author overlooks the bizzar aspect of the cultural commons from which all authors draw inspiration. This is readilly seen in the collections of fan fiction which abound and, were it not for the often extremely repressive aspects of copyright in limiting how and when a person can incorporate another's work in their own project (no, I'm not advocating plagerism, I'm advocating broader definitions of fair use that including giving the original creator credit for their contribution, if not exclusive use).
As an e-book and dead tree author... (Score:5, Insightful)
In recent years, I've fed my kids through the work I attract via my contributions to open source and the publication of free software on my web site. It is possible to make a living from free software.
I hope to use a similar model for a fantasy novel I'm writing.
The novel in question was first completed some years back, tentatively sold to a big name publisher, and then "lost" in a series of mergers. Quite discouraging. Writing is a damned tough business; I know, because I made a living for twelve years with magazine columns and programming books.
I write fiction for two reasons -- because I enjoy it, and to entertain people. But getting into the fiction market (as in making money) is very, very hard. The publishing industry is terribly conservative and biased in the most incredible ways.
Success as a writer -- especially as a fiction writer -- is elusive. Lost in a sea of lousy over-the-transom manuscripts, agents, and myopic publishers, how does an author stand out and make themselves known?
Well, I'm told that John Grisham started his career by self-publishing his first books, and selling them from the trunk of his car at fairs and flea markets. Self-promotion is the root of all success...
And perhaps people will pay me directly, if they believe my book worthy.
So I'm publishing a book in a few weeks via my website, complete with full-color plates (artwork by my talented wife), and a story written exactly the way I want it, without the interference (or grammatical safety net!) of an editor. The complete book will be available under exactly the same terms as a paper book -- you can give it away, make copies for your friends, or print it out, all without paying me a dime.
BUT, I'll also have a honor-based online payment system; for less than the cost of a typical paperback, people who enjoy the book can pay for it. They are not required to pay me -- it is a matter of honor and ethics.
I don't expect most people to pay for what they download; if they simply enjoy the book, pass it on to friends, read it to their kids -- that will be victory (in a different sense.) What I'm giving people is an honest chance to compensate me, the author, for my work, if they deem it worthy.
How many times have you bought a paperback, found it unreadable, and put it on the shelf unfinished or dissatisfied? How often does a pretty cover conceal a lousy book? It happens often enough for me, especially when buying a new science fiction or fantasy book. Wouldn't it be better if you could read the book first, and then only pay the authors whose work you considered worthy?
Perhaps I'm too optimistic about people; if nothing else, this will be an interesting experiment in publishing and human relations.
Mailing list? (Score:3, Interesting)
My perception of the way books are normally written is very close to my perception of how proprietary software is developed. In secret, with help only from those with a financial interest in the book.
I'm in the process of writing my first book, which I intend to distribute under the FDL.
So, my actual question is, does anybody know of a mailing list or other "support group" for (aspiring) Free Book authors?
-Peter
Interesting problem... (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that though ClearType looks great subjectively it gives me a massive headache on my 17" ViewSonic VA800 LCD screen if I leave it on for a day or two of heavy computer use, even after I "tuned" it. I haven't set it up on a PDA and tried reading a Gutentext or other ebook because of that (well, and cuz I got rid of my PocketPC device and am back to a Clie for now... doh).
Luckily there are still some immediate options if you are one of the many who *know* about Project Gutenberg etexts (for those of us whose taste in books, e- and otherwise is somewhat antiquated) but have never actually *read* one due to their well, umm, rather plain text look and feel. In particular GutenMark [sandroid.org] should do the trick. So download a couple of GutenTexts and GutenMark them into PDF/PS and you have something you might not exactly be able to curl up with, but at least it's readable.
Re:And this is exactly why I support DRM... (Score:3, Insightful)
Are music and video different than books? (Score:5, Interesting)
I claim DRM will fail for similar reasons to 'anti-books' as they are called. If what they do (with DRM) to a CD or DVD to make it uncopyable, and usable on exactly one computer also makes it less usable on standard audio and video hardware, I think they could lose it all very quickly. As long as the average consumer can use the media he bought in any number of players (including old ones), they have a chance of selling them. But if DRM means you lose the right of first sale property, which includes the right to lend the media to a friend and such, the average joe will quickly reject this junk.
There is also a growing number of people that won't buy it unless they retain basic fair use copying rights. I'm one of them, as are a lot of people on slashdot. I don't have any MP3 or Ogg devices yet, but I'm likely to convert my entire music collection to this type of system in the next five years (give or take). I'm quite confident that there will be enough material that doesn't have these ridiculous restrictions that I won't feel I'm missing anything, and frankly if an artist lets their work get released in this way, I don't need them.