Publishing on the internet

[Lioness]

Personally I much prefer books. I often read for more than an hour at a time, and my eyes would get sore very quickly reading from a screen for that long.
Also, as other people have mentioned, it just doesn't feel right, can you imagine curling up beside a fire with a nice ebook reader in your hand? Just...no. Doesn't work for me.

[MarkCN]

Originally Posted by Ian Whates

Hi, Mark,

Thanks for your thoughts on this, and...

Welcome to the Chrons!

What took you so long??

I was always a lurker, watching you all from the shadows, biding my time...

[Anne Lyle]

Originally Posted by ctg

There's a solution for that problem, the e-paper (reader), but thing is, you can only get them from the oriental countries.

??? Where did you get that idea? The iRex iLiad has been available to buy online in Europe for over a year now, and I've seen a more recent model on sale in Borders here in the UK. The Amazon Kindle is available in the US - and in the US only, AFAIK, owing to the content transfer mechanism relying on a cell-phone-like connection (another reason to avoid it like the plague!).

I find the iLiad very easy to read a novel on - its surface is off-white with crisp black text, and none of the eyestrain that you get from reading from a PC screen. Page turning uses a thumb-operated bar along the left side of the screen, so it even feels like leafing through a real book. Admittedly the iLiad is more expensive than some of the other epaper readers out there, but I chose it because it has a built-in Wacom digitizer for annotating documents and scribbling notes, so I can use for more than just reading.

Yes I love paper books too, but being able to carry a whole bunch of books and documents around in something the size of a very slim paperback has its advantages as well

ADDENDUM:

The real problem with ereaders replacing books is going to be DRM. If you can't lend an individual ebook to a friend because it's locked to your device, what happens to word-of-mouth - the only publicity that most authors get? The publishing industry urgently needs to get its collective head around an alternative revenue model that works with digital technology, not against it.

[AdoroBookWorks]

Hello
We're a new publisher and very interested in electronic publishing for several reasons. It's "green". It reduces production costs (and more annoying lately, transportation costs) to virtually zero. It's fast.

We've been looking at the bewildering array of formats and readers and think a major reason people don't lke them as well as books is that they are unlikeable. Don't get me started on Kindle (you pay double for a reader so you can have a monopolisitic wifi hookup in case you just have to have a book between visists to a computer).

We're looking into mobiles and phones very seriously. In Japan people read novels on phones and write novels for phones. If you take the bus to work, it's an easy way to read once you get used to it.

We REALLY like something that hasn't really hit yet, but need some numbers to bring prices down. The big problem with mobile readers is the screen... voila.. video glasses.
Some can be made translucent, so the reading is superimposed on what you;re looking at, I've seen them for one eye only.


We are concentrating on simple pdf documents initially. They are manuals which would be used when at the computer anyway, so it works well.
But we're keeping an eye open.

(Woops, I don't have enough posts to show this cool picture. Just try to imagine an ipod with futuristic glasses you use instead of a screen.

[ctg]

I came across this during my morning research. It's a development kit for those people who actually want to try to understand how e-paper technology works. Check the video, E Ink shows off the AM300 developer kit - Hack a Day

[ctg]

So the winner is the Sony. Why? Well, it's the best made and nicest looking of the four by some margin, and as is often said by fans of the iPod, it just works. Give all four of these devices to a ten-year-old and ask them to tell you which is the easiest to switch on, use and get familiar with, they will tell you the Sony. How do we know this? Because we tried it with a couple of ten-year-olds.

It's the little things: the dedicated bookmark button, the fact you can access all your bookmarks from the main menu rather than having to open up the relevant book first, and the menu layout. It just shows that Sony has been around the block once or twice when it comes to making a usable and desirable consumer gadget. The only serious drawback is the lack of support for Mobipocket files

Group Test: electronic book readers | Register Hardware

[Team 2012]

Mark, many don't think the future lies in the direction of specialized eBook readers. (and certainly not expensive, monopololistic ones like Kindle) but in the evolution of PDA/cell phone type devices.

In Japan people read novels on phones and write novels for phones. If you take the bus to work, it's an easy way to read once you get used to it.

Exactly. On the metro reading very cheap books that can be searched and downloaded and all that.
That don't destroy resources.

The worship of physical books, as opposed to the content of books, is misplacement, could almost be seen as a cult or fetish. And people moved from hardbacks to paperbacks. Audio lovers who raved about speakers and high-tech turntables now listen to mp3's on earbuds.
Will people who are 12 today continue to worship books, or be comfortable accessing information on handheld devices? How about people who are 3 today?

Print is entering a twilight. How long that twilight takes remains to be seen.

[marklord]

Some users of the Kindle also seem to worship that as well!

I think with all the new technology a lot of people seem to lose sight of the message because they are distracted by the medium. One bad side effect of the internet, blogging etc, is that there is a lot more rubbish to wade through as anyone can get stuff out there.

Yours

Grumpy curmudgeon

[thesoothsayer]

Internet brings us another challenge: publishing on the internet. I'm curious what people think about it, generally speaking. It seems bookstores had to close their bussiness after more than 40 years on the market.

Do you really think books should be available only on line ? What about the paper version ? Are they old fashion ?

I've read plenty of novels on my laptop but I still prefer a good paper book anytime.

If the ebook readers can reach a level where the comfort of holding and reading from one is about the same as a paper book, I'll probably make a shift. I think there are lots of advantages that can be designed into an electronic book reader: built-in search functions, built-in dictionaries and translators, simple book-marking of important parts, and simplicity in making notes and associating them to different parts of a book. All these functions would be a huge plus over a paper book.

But for now, I think paper books still have an important role to play and I don't foresee a big shift for at least another 5-10 years.

[kadife]

I've just been checking out the price of e-books, and I was surprised to see that they are still fairly expensive (although there are 'pirate' books to download, of course). Added to the price of the electronic reader--there seem to be 3-4 good ones available on the market--it means that they aren't a particularly economical alternative for me at the moment.

BUT: Since it is really difficult/time consuming obtaining the books I want outside the UK sometimes, I will probably gravitate more to e-books in the future (and I'm running out of space for any more bookshelves in my house!)

I still don't think anything would be more attractive than a good old paper version, though! Not only for reading, I like just to look at them on the shelves...

[ctg]

At the moment e-paper is still in its infant shoes. Nobody really knows how to sell the product. Just the other day there was an article saying that the new kindle steals blogs and sell them for a price.

Now, think who on earth would want to do that?

The people, like you say can go in the net and download whatever they want for absolutely free. To me the avenue is exciting and full of promises. The e-books should be selling for much, much lower prices then their paper cousins. You see that same thing happening in the music market. It used to be that people digitised their CD's and listened them in their computers. Then came the Napster and soon after the iPod, which was bundled together with a portal.

Should that happen to the e-books? Absolutely. But I cannot see it happening as long as there are marketing gurus who don't know jack-sh** about the "interwebs".