Book People Archive

Re: What's an ebook? and what's a book? stating the obvious (which often seems to be ignored)

[Moderator: I would request that participants in this thread *not*
 crosspost discussion posts between this mailing list and any other.  It
 tends to add noise to both lists; people who only get one list
 see only a fragmented discussion (and further fragment it because
 they may only get a partial view), and people who get both lists get
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 I'll pass through this latest round of posts, which is from people
 on this list, but reserve the right to reject later posts if they're
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----- Original Message -----
From: Michael S. Hart
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 9:33 AM
Subject: Re: [BP] What's an ebook? and what's a book? stating the obvious
(which often seems to be ignored)

>I am perfectly happy with the definitions we have been using:

>An Ebook or eBook is the physical device that we carry around.

>An Etext or eText is the file[s] we read when displayed by such an Ebook.

>The book is the physical, the text is what is written in it. . .this
doesn't
require any definitions that haven't been in use for centuries.

I respectfully disagree.

A book is a large and meaningful set of words. It can exist in many forms,
both analog and digital., but its ultimate destination is the human mind.

A book in digital form is an ebook. It need not have a physical form that
can be carried around.

In an ebook, the content may be stored as text (etext) and/or sound and/or
images. It may then be copied, distributed, and output in a wide variety of
media.

Mechanical and electronic devices (known as readers) may help and may even
be needed to make the content of a book understandable. Such devices include
print-to-audio converters, etext-to-voice converters, computers, cassette
players, MP3 players, and specialized gadgets designed to deal with
encrypted etexts.

Up until recently, the purpose of mechanical and electronic reading devices
was to make books accessible by more people in more ways. The purpose of the
new generation of readers is somewhat bizarre. Publishers deliberately make
their content inaccessible through encryption, and electronics manufacturers
sell devices and software designed to unencrypt that content and present it
in usable and attractive form. You wind up paying them not just for the
content, but for the means to solve the problem that they themselves
created.     

I hope that this is a temporary aberration -- an attempt to use technology
to block the advances of technology and thereby allow old and obsolete
business models to persist. I hope that both publishers and electronics
manufacturers will eventually return to the task of making books accessible
to more people in more ways.

Richard Seltzer, seltzer@[redacted] http://www.samizdat.com
Internet marketing consultant http://www.samizdat.com/consult.html
Online discussion at Web Business Bootcamp http://webworkzone.com/bootcamp
Audio book of The Lizard of Oz http://www.samizdat.com/liz
617-469-2269