i would HATE (read: LOVE) to harp on the recent ebooks issue longer than need be, since we've moved on a slight bit, but i just read an essay, well, a transcription of a presentation, by cory doctorow titled "ebooks: neither e, nor books" (from the collection content) which wraps some of the issues i raised in the steve harvey post over the weekend very nicely with some of the general perceptions of ebooks, and as such, i am not prepared to let this die just yet.interestingly enough, in making his books freely available through a creative commons license, doctorow fans have ended up translating the book into numerous languages, including braile, and there's even a collection of people reading the essays aloud for the deaf or hearing impaired, this making his (e)books more and more divide crossing, if that's a phrase we can all agree on.
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Since there can never be too many Cory Doctorow macros or xkcd injokes, I see no reason to drop the ebook issue yet.
ReplyDeleteI think that ebooks, with the publishing industry the way it is now (flailing but not failing), are pretty much a win/win situation for everyone involved; fortunately a lot of writers and publishers seem to get that as well. Tor Books is giving away ebooks by the stack from Tor.com, and I have at least half a dozen free-access fiction magazines bookmarked. In this context, it seems a little weird that the biggest ebook reader gadget is so proprietary.
I like Doctorow's points, but I disagree that the e-book needs to be this formally amorphous thing. I can see different e-books emerging, like this one, or maybe you can choose the option to have wide editing power and hyperlinks, etc, or not to have it. It's enough to me that the Kindle is light, easily transportable, you don't have to hold down the pages, the pages won't blow in the wind, you can enhance the font, get (the available) books on demand, etc.
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