The Future of EBooks
Cory Doctorow has posted his experiences with providing Down and Out in the Magical Kingdom as a free download and its subsequent reception as a printed work.
The whole thing is worth a read for those who are interested in how technology and print are likely to intersect.
The short form: for newer readers, it wasn’t enough to have just one format or the other. They really wanted both formats. And don’t short change the reader by giving them a teaser. Treat them right.
Best news: Mr. Doctorow found his experience so successful he’s doing it again and being even more liberal with what he makes available.
Biggest gripe: Mr. Doctorow downplays the distinction between the experience of text as ink and text as pixels. He argues that because we spend hours each day in front of a glowing tube that the experience of reading on CRT is essentially the same as that of reading dead trees.
I can’t speak for the next generation. Maybe having grown up without trees and with pixels, they’ll do better. But I can’t read long works on screen. Anything longer than two page scrolls and my mind has subtle issues, leaving me with a iced-over feeling and some minor comprehension gaps. Frequnetly, I have to re-read some sections of long e-stories before I can I’m sure I have the whole thing correct. I almost never have to re-read sections of print stories.
I may write on the computer, but when I read for errors or continuity, I print the damn thing out.
Back when I was a programmer, it wasn’t much different. You spent all day at the keyboard, but if you had to find a subtle bug, you were doing youself a favor to print it out. It wasn’t just me. A number of programmers I knew worked that way. Just some small difference in the way otherwise identical information is processed.
Worst news: Back in the day, Hugo Gernsbeck offered his writers pennies per word. Today’s writers are getting… pennies per word. Mr. Doctorow comes as close to saying “it will never be anything but a hobby” as you can without actually saying it. [futurismic]