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Question for this group. How do you feel about a book in a PDF format and
how do you feel about buying eBooks vs paper based books. Check out
http://www.ebooktech.com/ which provides a way to publish and buy books in
PDF format. Here is an interesting argument about eBooks from another
mailing list I am member of.
"Paper is dead." As some of you know, my new project is an "eBookstore"
devoted to technical books in eBook form. (Shameless plug: it's at
www.eBooksTech.com) I even license titles from some of the publishers on
this list. Here is some of the things I have learned from my customers, both
from sales data and from asking randomly about their purchases:
** Virtually all purchasers print out a copy of the book (we enable a
limited number of copies to be printed). I have yet to talk to a customer
who hasn't printed out the majority of the eBook they purchased. Almost none
of our customers read an eBook in a linear start-to-finish fashion on their
PC; most cite poor screen resolution and the "unnaturalness" of reading from
a monitor as reasons for not doing so.
** eBooks are favored when trying to find a specific reference by using
the full-text search and retrieval functionality we include in our eBooks.
Our customers don't read eBooks; they "use" them as search tools.
** Our best selling eBooks are all engineering-level (BSEE/BSCS) titles.
Lower-level titles on Visual Basic, etc., sell poorly in eBook form. This
leads me to believe that professionals (like engineers) who are already
accustomed to using .PDF documents readily accept eBooks, but the average
computer book purchaser is not yet ready for them. We may have to wait until
we have an entire generation that learned to read off a monitor before we
have a true mass market for eBooks.
** Of all the large publishers, only John Wiley (in the person of Kelly
Franklin) really has a clue about the potential and pitfalls of eBooks.
McGraw-Hill, the Pearson companies, etc., are hopeless. You only have to
look at the fiasco M-H ran into with the now-defunct Reciprocal to know what
I mean. To me, the real advantage of eBooks is that you can cut out the
intermediaries between the publisher and reader (like, say, Ingram!) and I
can't figure out why someone like M-H thought you had to replicate the print
book distribution model for electronic titles.
** eBooks can be substantially enhanced over print versions. Starting
with .PDF files, you can embed audio and video files, routines written in
scripting languages, supporting software, hyperlinks to web sites, etc.
There is much work to do here; any authors bold enough to go the eBook-only
route with a new work instead of print?
** The fact that all of our customers print out the eBooks they order
makes me suspect print-on-demand technology maybe has a bigger future than
we suspect. When you look at the economics of book publishing, you're struck
at what a large percentage of the revenue stream is consumed by physical
transport and handling---shipping, warehousing, returns, etc.---of the
printed books and what a paltry percentage of the revenues actually makes it
back to the author and publisher who create the book. I suspect---or maybe I
should say I hope---that one day P-O-D machines will be in every Kinko's,
Office Depot, Wal-Mart, etc., and books can be downloaded to and printed at
such locations. The economics of publishing will be better for authors and
publishers once Ingram, Braun-Brumfeld, PublishersGroup West, etc., are all
factored out of the equation.
** Paper isn't going to die any time soon with books. Paper is not
subject to disk crashes, low battery power, viruses, OS bugs, or related
things. I think it easier to read a book in the bathroom than to use my Dell
notebook (I suspect others feel the same way). And a lot of people like it!
Where paper will really be hurt is when it comes to materials of high time
value that we normally don't save, like newspapers. I dropped my
subscription to the NY Times a couple of years and now just read it on-line,
and the LA Times is going to get a similar treatment when my paid-up
subscription expires.
The current publishing environment is tough, but there will be many
opportunities ahead for those who can weather the storm.
---------------------------------------------------------
Harry Helms
Co-founder, LLH Technology Publishing
Now Part of the Elsevier Science & Technical Book Group
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On Sat, 2 Feb 2002 09:00:13 -0800, Mitchell Waite wrote:
> Question for this group. How do you feel about a book in a PDF format and
> how do you feel about buying eBooks vs paper based books. Check out
> http://www.ebooktech.com/ which provides a way to publish and buy books in
> PDF format. Here is an interesting argument about eBooks from another
> mailing list I am member of.
- I actually read e-books in the e-format, but mostly not technical manuals.
The market for technical books is a little murkier, because of all of the
equations and graphics and layout and font changes and so on, but pure
prose works great on a Palm Pilot - I always have a novel or two with me
at the dentist's office, sitting at the BMV waiting for them to call my
number, waiting for a movie to start, or whatever. As an aside, the
ridiculous prices publishers charge for current, copyrighted works (you're
charging me the same price the bookstore could sell me paper for? And
pocketing the distribution charges, channel markup, and printing costs?
Yeah, right. Pull the other one.) have gotten me reading the classics.
- PDF is nice, but it needs lots of things that some people producing PDF
seem to forget:
o There needs to be *at least* a table of contents in bookmark form.
o Page thumbnails are virtually useless, but should be included anyway just
so it looks like you care.
o The "real" table of contents, if the book is also provided in paper format
with such a table of contents, should consist of hyperlinks. This is
especially important if you didn't go to the trouble to provide one in
the PDF file.
o The index, if there is one, should also contain hyperlinks for the page
numbers, see alsos, and so on.
o If sample code is included, it should either be possible to select it
and copy it directly from the PDF document, or there should be a hyperlink
to a text file containing the sample code. This should apply whenever
the sample is more than 2-3 lines long, and possibly even more often.
o The document should be text, not scanned pages. This makes it usable
with accessibility aids (that's a plug for my employer) as well as making
it more usable with things like the PDF reader for PalmOS. It also means
you can zoom in without losing detail (if you want an example of how not
to do this, get a copy of the original Dr. Dobbs' Essential Books on
Graphics.) Related to this, the document should be searchable.
o If lots of images are supplied, a separate "images index" wouldn't be a
bad idea. Something like a contact sheet, with hyperlinks to the full-
sized versions of the images in the document.
--
plane{-z,-3normal{crackle scale.2#local a=5;#while(a)warp{repeat x flip x}rotate
z*60#local a=a-1;#end translate-9*x}pigment{rgb 1}}light_source{-9red 1rotate 60
*z}light_source{-9rgb y rotate-z*60}light_source{9-z*18rgb z}text{ttf"arial.ttf"
"RP".01,0translate-<.6,.4,.02>pigment{bozo}}light_source{-z*3rgb-.2}//Ron Parker
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"Mitchell Waite" <mit### [at] dnai com> wrote :
>
> Question for this group. How do you feel about a book in a PDF format
I love e-books, especially for manuals. But I hate PDF for them. HTML is
much more flexible and the problems of different display on different
browsers can be reduced with a little work. PDF is mostly used by ebook
authors to prevent copyright theft, but that has been shown to be a
non-solution to a non-issue. The advantages of HTML as far as editing,
updating, and annotating far surpass any deficits.
I am -much- more likely to buy a manual if it has the entire book on
disc included. In fact, if it does, I am likely to ignore the printed
version and read the book as an ebook.
But, as you say, paper is not dead. When I am reading something I am
likely to print out parts the way some people highlight sections. A couple
of things I have ended up printing the whole book.
I am still looking for a good cheap ebook reader though...
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No thank you. Yuck to all e-options as the *only* option. If
packaged in *addition* to a book made of dead tree parts, that
would be fine, but I want trees slaughtered so I can hold it in
my hands and flip the pages.
-peter
Mitchell Waite wrote:
> Question for this group. How do you feel about a book in a PDF format and
> how do you feel about buying eBooks vs paper based books. Check out
> http://www.ebooktech.com/ which provides a way to publish and buy books in
> PDF format. Here is an interesting argument about eBooks from another
> mailing list I am member of.
<snip>
--
Current obsession: "Ballet pour ma fille."
http://www.applesnake.net
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Dearmad wrote:
>
> No thank you. Yuck to all e-options as the *only* option. If
> packaged in *addition* to a book made of dead tree parts, that
> would be fine, but I want trees slaughtered so I can hold it in
> my hands and flip the pages.
I pretty much hold the same opinion but wouldn't care if it were
printed on high quality recycled paper instead of slaughtering
poor little helpless defenseless trees.
--
Ken Tyler
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in news:3c5c1a60$1@news.povray.org Mitchell Waite wrote:
> Question for this group. How do you feel about a book in a PDF format
> and how do you feel about buying eBooks vs paper based books.
I do not realy like them. Have some from fatbrain (I think). Reading
(PDF's) from a screen is not as comfortable as reading from paper.
Especially when it's in a manual form and you want to have other
programs opend along with it to do the excercises.
Also printing 100+ pages, double sided, always seems to give problems.
Blank pages that are not counted as a page for some reason, printer
eating an extra page etc. It's not a proces you can start and then walk
away. Also the if you want a good quality print, you could get a real
book for the same price probably.
Another problem I had that when I transferred the PDF's and keys to a
new machine, I couldn't get access to the document anymore.
Reagarding "real books", I don't like paper backs. A real binding is
preferred. Also, in case of a manual / tutorial, you should be able to
put the book flat on your desk, without pages to start flipping by them
selves. Even if you open the book on the first page.
Another aspect of real books is the paper quality. It should be heavy
yet not thick. It should be smooth yet not glossy. Raytracers seem to be
night animals, so chances are that the books will be used with
artificial light. Many satinated and glossy papers have the problem that
areas of the text get unreadable due to "highlights", especialy with
(fixed position) artificial light. A paper I like is the one used for
Bentley's "Programming Pearls 2nd edition", Stoustrup's "The C++
programming language 3d edition" is already to glossy.
Ingo
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Ken wrote:
>
> Dearmad wrote:
>
>>No thank you. Yuck to all e-options as the *only* option. If
>>packaged in *addition* to a book made of dead tree parts, that
>>would be fine, but I want trees slaughtered so I can hold it in
>>my hands and flip the pages.
>>
>
> I pretty much hold the same opinion but wouldn't care if it were
> printed on high quality recycled paper instead of slaughtering
> poor little helpless defenseless trees.
As long as a tree died at some point in time is all I care about.
I agree. :)
-peter
--
Current obsession: "Ballet pour ma fille."
http://www.applesnake.net
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Real books don't get downloaded once and then distributed illegally. end of
argument really.
--
Rick
Kitty5 WebDesign - http://Kitty5.com
POV-Ray News & Resources - http://Povray.co.uk
TEL : +44 (01270) 501101 - FAX : +44 (01270) 251105 - ICQ : 15776037
PGP Public Key
http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x231E1CEA
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On Sun, 3 Feb 2002 01:06:19 -0000, Rick [Kitty5] wrote:
> Real books don't get downloaded once and then distributed illegally. end of
> argument really.
You'd be surprised.
--
#local R=rgb 99;#local P=R-R;#local F=pigment{gradient x}box{0,1pigment{gradient
y pigment_map{[.5F pigment_map{[.3R][.3F color_map{[.15red 99][.15P]}rotate z*45
translate x]}]#local H=pigment{gradient y color_map{[.5P][.5R]}scale 1/3}[.5F
pigment_map{[.3R][.3H][.7H][.7R]}]}}}camera{location.5-3*z}//only my opinions
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"Rick [Kitty5]" <ric### [at] kitty5com> wrote :
>
> Real books don't get downloaded once and then distributed illegally.
Of course they do. Well... the "distributed illegally" part at least. A
week after a book is released in hardback it's been scanned, OCRed and
posted. There is no way to avoid that sort of thing other than making it
generally available and depending upon the money made from those who -do-
pay for what they want.
Illegal distribution is not likely to cause any diminution in the actual
sales of a book. In fact, there is a good chance that it increases the sales
by allowing people to peruse the book in the same way they might in a book
store. Yes, it's wrong, no, it's not detrimental.
The problem comes when people try to re-publish the book and sell it.
That's piracy and is both wrong and harmful. It is also just as unavoidable,
in that publishing a e-book does not change the chance of it happening.
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