be - io9

posts about #be more →
The Future Of Publishing? You May Be Looking At It
The Best Scifi Songs To Yell At The Karaoke Bar

Your version of Internet Explorer is not supported. Please upgrade to the most recent version in order to view comments.

Dsmvwl Admin Promote to frontpage Approve user Ban user ×

Golem100
12/24/08

In reply to The Future Of Publishing? You May Be Looking At It
Although many people disparage ebooks I think they will eventually turn hard copy books into the 8-track's of the publishing world. This could improve the profit margin of publishers as they can eliminate a lot of labor and material costs for the books they market. On the other hand, several authors offer their books on the internet for free or for donations which means no money for publishers.
Reply

Golem100 was starred Golem100 was unstarred

iCurmudgeon
12/24/08

@Golem100: For e-books to become really popular publishers have to agree on a common format; otherwise they'll just Balkanize the fledgling industry. Right now you have at least half a dozen: Kinlde/mobipocket, ereader, PDF, iSilo, TXT, RTF -- and maybe more. There has to be just one, and any updates to it have to be backward compatible, because you don't want an e-library whose contents can't be read by the latest reaer software.

The other thing that worries me about e-books is their impermanence. It would be terrible for some future archeologist from Zeta Reticuli to come to the conclusion that Mankind didn't know how to read, or, worse, really had nothing to say to future generations.
Reply

iCurmudgeon was starred iCurmudgeon was unstarred

corpore-metal
12/24/08

@iCurmudgeon: All the more reason to write all this digital stuff in open formats.

ASCII text is good. Microsoft Word is bad. MP3 is bad. Ogg Vorbis is good. HTML is good. Flash Objects are bad.
Reply

corpore-metal was starred corpore-metal was unstarred

noncornbatant
12/24/08

@corpore-metal: It's going to be really hard to beat paper, never mind *real* archival formats like stone, engraved metal, and so on. It's not as simple as proprietary formats vs. open ones -- there are more instances of MS Word in the world than there are OpenOffice, after all. Also, how do you know what an HTML/JavaScript document is "supposed to" look like or how it is "supposed to" work? The format is open, but it's also a clusterfuck.

Once you have a good, open format, how do you archive it? Few machine-readable media have a very good shelf life. Burned CDs/DVDs fade, hard drives lock up (and their filesystems go obsolete), and so on. Pressed CDs should last a long time, but can you afford that? (Maybe -- it's actually not that expensive anymore!)

On the price/longevity curve, OCR-able text printed on archival paper starts to look real, real good. Most digital storage devices should be thought of as temporary.

The balkanization problem can be partly solved by having a reader device that can handle any input (trivial). The problem is, the reader device vendors all want to lock you in to their distribution channel, which is the ultimate reason for all the retarded formats (RTF or PDF is all they ever really *needed*...). So there's no economic incentive for vendors to adopt a format with real longevity.

Except for the good ol' paper book.
Reply

noncornbatant was starred noncornbatant was unstarred

Annalee Newitz
12/24/08

@noncornbatant: To be fair, it's not as if paper books last very long either. A ton of pulp paperbacks released 100 years ago are falling into dust right now, their contents forgotten as io9's will be in the event of a ginormous solar flare or mega-EMP or just a revolution in storage devices.
Reply

Annalee Newitz was starred Annalee Newitz was unstarred

braak: You are, as usual, completely correct.
12/24/08

@Annalee Newitz: I've already forgotten basically everything I've read here.
Reply

Rasselas
12/24/08

In reply to The Future Of Publishing? You May Be Looking At It
Publishing news reminds me, like the Monday morning movie receipts report, of something that Steve Ross said about the success of Nabisco:

"Some genius invented the Oreo. The rest of us are just living off the dividends."

Or, as William Goldman put it: "No one knows anything."
Reply

Rasselas was starred Rasselas was unstarred

Earlier discussions Other discussions Show all discussions Show featured discussions only Start a new discussion

#be

io9

SUBSCRIBE TO io9

The Future Of Publishing? You May Be Looking At It

The Best Scifi Songs To Yell At The Karaoke Bar

Login

Reset Password

Register

Submit Your Comment