Book People Archive

Re: serial books? serial libraries?

bill said:
>    And the mission of a technical manual is
>    different from that of a romance novel.
>    But they're both books, largely because
>    they have a common form factor.

um, no, i think i would have to disagree, slightly.

their missions, while different, are similar enough
that both are adequately served by the book format,
which is to say leaves of paper of a fairly certain size
(in the range of 5*8 inches) which are bound together.

but the mission of a newspaper is such that it requires a
different "form-factor".   still paper-based, but different...


>    Sure, I agree that the online NYT is a newspaper.
>    I'm suggesting, though, that in the e-world
>    an e-newspaper can be a kind of e-book, in a way
>    that it just isn't true for the p-newspaper and p-book.

and i'm suggesting that -- because the two formats are not
"interchangeable" in the paper-based world -- it _might_ be
the case they won't be "interchangeable" in the e-world either.

mind you, my questions about what we would gain (and lose)
by considering an e-newspaper to be the same as an e-book
were not rhetorical.   i would really like to hear some answers.
it's not a certainty that we'd lose anything.   at the same time,
it's not a certainty that we would _gain_ anything either.   so...


>    To a large extent, this is because they share a common
>    delivery system and reading system (a common form factor)
>    in the e-world, but not in the p-world.

ok, and here is one place where i _might_ beg to differ with you.

because it's not altogether clear that e-books and e-newspapers
_should_ "share a reading system".   or even their delivery system.
(unless we think of "delivery system" in such a generic way as to
be described as "the internet", which is too broad to have meaning.)

first, even with a "standard" paper-book, we can find all kinds of
functionality specificities if we look closely.   for instance, think of
a dictionary with its carved-cuts located at each particular letter.

a manual will often have something similar-but-different, in the
form of reversed-bleeds which delineate its different sections...

or consider that some books -- like manuals and cookbooks --
have a binding which will allow them to lay flat for consultation...

for a novel, a text-only "reading system" will suffice just fine,
but for a manual or a how-to book, you'll need illustrations...

or, if you've got a coffee-table book, you'll need bigger pages...

and simple diagrams will work acceptably when you only need to
"grasp side a and insert tab b in slot c while twisting in direction d".
but they ain't gonna cut it to replace the carburetor on a '56 chevy;
for that, you're gonna want to have some multimedia capabilities...

and once we get into illustrations, and especially multimedia,
then the ability to run on a number of hardware form-factors
-- like the p.d.a. -- might well become severely compromised.

all this is still while we're firmly located in the realm of the "book";
pull in magazines and newspapers too, and complications multiply.

if we look at the new york times online, as you have suggested, we
see that its interface looks nothing like the interface of an e-book.

further, i've programmed a number of e-book viewer-programs,
and have been astounded by how a small shift in my initial focus
ramifies into a raft of different capabilities in these applications.

the viewer-program that is specialized to read listserve digests,
for example, has morphed in a noticeably different direction than
the one which was specialized to read project gutenberg e-texts.

all of these programs have common "engine" elements underneath,
but their interface and surface capabilities are often _quite_ varied,
even though they're all being designed and programmed by myself.

i've been convinced, by this experience, we need viewer-programs
that are tweakable, so they can be modified for each specific need.

this has led me to believe that all the people who are wishing for
"a common viewer-app" -- and/or a standardized file-format --
don't have a good handle on the nature of real-world publications.

and bill, i would love to have your uplib system prove me wrong!

but i'm not at all convinced that "a common reading system" is
in the cards.   nor is the n.y. times, for that matter, as evidenced
by their deal with microsoft to develop a special reader-program.

not that i think that deal is going to be fruitful, because i don't,
but it might be interesting that bill hill moved in that direction.

and as it's obvious that people read newspapers in a completely
different manner than we read books, it makes sense to me that
the reader-system must be different in some significant regards,
notably in the ability to "get an overview" and skip large sections.

nor do i believe that "a common delivery system" is a good move.

one book can take up a fairly large chunk of time in a person's life,
so it can be expected that selection of that book will take some time,
and its downloading can be a discrete event.   in stark contrast, though,
people of tomorrow will want the downloading of their newspapers to
take place automatically, in the background, probably while they sleep,
with analysis done on their machine that selects the sections and articles
that will be highlighted for special attention when the paper is "opened".

so the "delivery system" for a newspaper will be markedly different and
immensely more complex than one that might be acceptable for a book.


>    I think this confluence will have back-effects on what kinds of
>    books get written, in probably both the e-world and the p-world.

well, yes, and -- as i said -- it would be interesting to look at that.
but let's do that looking _directly_, and not through this diffuse filter...

***

now, for other people reading along, i know from long experience that
bill is a very sophisticated observer of electronic-books, and i do believe
he knows full well everything that i've laid out here in "opposition" to him.

so i think the point that he's making here is an "intermediate" one, that
we are well-advised to stop thinking about electronic _books_ per se,
and take a broader view of the huge advances that have been made in
cyberspace in regard to information-transmittal _in_general_, using
wikipedia and online newspapers as illustrations of this broader view.

as an intermediate position, i can support that.   indeed, i made a point
that is quite similar in a post last year, where i also pointed to wikipedia,
as well as the blogosphere and myspace.com, in this post to this listserve:
>   http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/bparchive?year=2006&post=2006-04-11,2

we're sitting here saying "why aren't e-books working?", when in fact,
if we look at the broader arena of information-transmittal in general,
cyberspace is making huge in-roads changing the face of our society.

compared to the book industry, which can still keep its head in the sand,
the newspaper business has been in a crisis-period for a very long time,
meaning they've come to a conclusion they need to work with cyberspace
and not just try to keep the existing business model for as long as they can.

(the book industry is like the music industry was before napster came along.
what's scary about these scenarios as they have played out is that the public
doesn't even seem to care much about "pirating" books.   this indicates to me
that the reading of books is on some very precarious ground in our culture.)

in closing, in many ways, i agree with this "intermediate" focus bill
advocates.

but i don't think we should sacrifice our long-term focus on specialized
needs for different e-documents, just to get to this intermediate position.

because once we realize the intermediate position that the various types
of e-documents have elements in common, we'll need to move on to the
next position which focuses again on the unique and special differences.

-bowerbird