Book People Archive

RE: eBooks and publishers

Michael,

Thanks for the considerate reply. I see that we are more on the same
wavelength than it appeared at first. Could we (and anyone else reading the
Book People list) begin a discussion of what is good or promising in the
large and small commercial digital book publication efforts? I think plenty
has been said about what is wrong with it, but there are some good things
also that are rarely if ever mentioned in this email list.  I have noticed a
substantial growth in the number of small publishers over the last few years
and think their efforts with unknown authors are very creditable. I try to
give their authors a chance and among the routine mysteries have found some
gems of general fiction and nonfiction. Some university presses are posting
free copies of some of their books (I have just recorded and listened to a
fascinating account of major figures in Afghanistan at the end of the 19th
century from UC Press); I know some of the university presses are testing
the waters now and hope to sell these books later, probably with some copy
protection added. There are also some paper publishers of genre fiction,
such as Baen, that give away some of their books in digital format and offer
others in digital format at very reasonable prices, books that are also
printed on paper and sold in stores.

Clearly if people like extexts from the Gutenberg, some of which are by
fairly obscure late 19th century or early 20th century authors, many of
these same people could be expected to like more current works by authors of
the same general level of quality but deal with current issues. I would like
to see more discussion on the Book People list of the positive potentials
and whatever promising examples there are of commercial digital book
publishing and not just concentration on the bad parts of it.

And of course, I would particularly like to hear contributions from anyone
with my special interest in sound recordings of  etexts, of whom there are a
small number who read the Book People sendings. In this regard, for example,
Adobe's ebook reader software, which took a beating because of all of its
restrictiveness, also for the first time incorporated a text-to-speech
engine. The problem was that the digitized voice was horrible. But I can see
a real place among people who read digital texts for the Adobe reader, even
as restrictive as it is, if they would add a first class voice to it. I
certainly would buy books for it even if I could not share them, provided I
could somehow use the reader on a portable device. The point being that
there can be many models of distribution and those of us who are interested
in the field as a whole can employ many of them, each with its advantages
and disadvantages. I don't think a stance of discouraging the development of
commercial etexts that don't meet our expectations of accessibility will
advance the field as well as welcoming whatever is good in it. I can agree
that I don't see much use in most situations for portable dedicated hardware
electric book readers, at least as they are now. But have you read The
Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson? In this work of science fiction he is
looking ahead at the potentials for nanotechnology to produce a slim, high
resolution paperlike device, perhaps in the format of an ordinary looking
book, which can by satellite download fully formatted books with pictures
from a near limitless libraries. If you look at the current Franklin and
Hiebook devices as first crude steps in that direction you can see that with
refinement over time such a device can provide a genuinely useful way to
read books, at least for certain books or under certain circumstances. Even
today, if you want a large library of difficult to obtain books, such as
parts of the Gutenberg collection, and you want to read them by eye instead
of ear and sit on your patio or go on vacation, the larger screen book
readers will have a definite place in the libraries of at least some readers
and help to expand the real usage of the Gutenberg.

We should consider if the Book People list could benefit from enlarging its
focus from the important archival and copyright issues that make up most of
its discussion and engage in a broader discussion of the many positive uses
of electronic texts as this field emerges with all its warts.

Leslie Evans