Planetfurry BBS

[Tygon]

Interesting... how long does the battery hold out with that?

[Syrius]

You know, I haven't fully tested it. I am currently charging the unit and will purposefully leave it on for one hour at mid-brightness setting to see how much the charge goes down. Since the application doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, I feel it won't drain the battery much.

Thanks for reminding me.

[Kellan Meig'h]

[Tygon]

[ScottyDM]

[ScottyDM]

[Major Ivy]

I know I have not said much and just lurked but I feel I should mention something here.

Self publishing; you get what you pay for.
I have gotten a few books done by this method, they are mostly crap.
I'm not talking about the quality of the manufacture but the content itself.
These type of services PRINT ONLY. What you send them will be what they print, no proof reading, no format checking, no typo correction. It is printed with every mistake intact just as you sent it. Some will offer this service but there is an extra fee for doing so.

[ScottyDM]

[Syrius]

[ScottyDM]

Mike cannot clarify his comment because he left PF, but I have to believe he was joking when he wrote that. Besides, Bradbury's story was about censorship, not new technology.


Paper and ink books will be around for a long, long time to come.

Recorded music has always been about technology (and the art, of course). From wax cylinders, to wire recorders, to shellac disks, to acetate tape, to vinyl disks, to mylar tapes in convenient plastic boxes, to CDs, to MP3 and AAC files. If you didn't have technology, you couldn't experience the music. And everyone knows the media deteriorates with time and has a limited life span. The old media gradually degraded in sound quality, while the digital media keeps going until it suddenly fails. And then there's the issue of the old media not playing on new technology. So one must maintain their old technology along side the new, or must transfer their collection from old media to new, or must repurchase their collection on new media. And movies are just like music.

Books are different. First, books require no technology to experience. Second, it's not difficult to produce a book that will last centuries, and in fact I have a copy of Burritt's Geography of the Heavens that was printed in 1860. Despite the slight discoloration and a few brownish spots, it's just as readable today as it was 149 years ago. Books are tangible. Books are a visceral experience. Books seem real.

But the world is changing and "books" is a very broad topic. Today there are several possible methods of delivering the reading experience:

• Paper and ink produced via traditional printing processes. For high-volumes and traditional sales outlets.
  
• Paper and ink produced via print on demand. For low volumes or intermittent demands.
  
• Electronic books with a variety of file formats, some not yet invented.
  
• Audio books distributed via CD or cassette tape.
  
• Audio books distributed via MP3 or AAC files, etc.

Which format will be the most valuable depends on the purpose of the book. A few examples:

• I feel the future of fiction lies in audio books, or as some future e-book file format that contains tags so a text-to-audio reader gets the dialog sounding like dialog. Audio works best with any book that the reader accesses in a linear fashion.
  
• The future of the textbook will be split between paper and ink produced via POD and an electronic format that lets the reader heavily notate the text.
  
• Knowledge books such as technology books, encyclopedias, etc. will work best in as an electronic book file format that allows the book owner to import the book into a database for full searchability across all their books within a user-selected field of study. This concept probably scares most publishers, but multibook searching is where the real value lies--else just get paper and ink. Note, I consider things like cookbooks to be in this category. For example it be great to be able to search your cookbook collection for recipes that used quinoa.
  
• For children's books paper and ink will rule for a long, long time to come. Who wants to hand a 3-year-old their e-book reader?
  
• The future of shop manuals will be split between paper and ink for small shops or individuals, while larger shops will want the books in electronic format so they can be instantly distributed to the point of use.
  
• Reference books are fabulous in searchable format. Currently each has its own database application wrapped around the content, such as Microsoft's Encarta. Someday it would be awesome if the database application and the content were separate products so you could search across all your reference books at once.
  
• Coffee table books will probably always be distributed in paper and ink form. However it might be nice to have the photos available electronically to display on a photo-display appliance or big-screen TV.
  
• Any book collector will gravitate to paper and ink.

Then again the big problem with all electronic formats is the issue that all a book owner's data could suddenly vanish--which is far more likely than a fire or other home disaster that could wipe out a library of paper and ink copies.

Something that I've not yet seen any publishers try (but then I haven't looked too hard) is dual distribution off a single sale. That is, produce and sell a paper and ink copy, but allow the purchasers of that copy to download an audio or e-book version of that title for free, or minimal cost. This could be keyed off of some physical thing in the paper and ink copy, such as the Nth word on some random page. This would be ideal for textbooks using POD for the paper and ink copy and free download for the searchable e-copy.

Scotty

[AmigaDragon]

[Syrius]

[ScottyDM]