Book People Archive

Re: a few notes on this fine monday morning

michael said:
>    My answer to the claim that people will not read eBooks via browsers
>    is that people will read eBooks through anything they want to use.

that wasn't exactly what i said.

i know readers.   readers read incessantly, off of _everything_,
including the back of cereal boxes.

that doesn't mean we should print our books on cereal boxes.
(well, actually, that sounds fun, but you know what i mean.)

if people have the means to view an e-book through a browser,
then we have the ability to give them another piece of software
that gives 'em a better _reading_experience_ than the browser,
and if they have that choice, they'll no longer use their browser...

and for many years now i've been clear on exactly what i mean by
"a better reading experience".   this post went up over 2 years ago:
>    http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/bparchive?year=2004&post=2004-01-08,3

using that roadmap as a guide, we can clearly see that the browser
is deficient to other general-purpose viewer-programs, specifically
word-processors, and certainly more-focused e-book viewer-apps...

-bowerbird