Open Media Review » publishing

Barnes and Noble e-Book Reader Launches Today

Thomas Gideon — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:44:31 +0000

RWW has the pertinent details, as do many other sites. It seems to be an improvement over the Kindle, in terms of consumer freedoms, but still largely hobbled. Personally, I won’t touch it as long as AT&T is the carrier but also a worry is that B&N still uses cumbersome DRM. They do support more open and standard formats, though, most notably ePub but these do not appear to be the formats used for their commercial offerings.

Cory’s DIY Experiment

Thomas Gideon — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:43:16 +0000

He finally shares details on his print-on-demand, short fiction anthology.

I will admit to some insider knowledge of Cory’s plans and relief that he is finally publicizing parts of what is a very ambition business plan. There is much here that should be familiar by now due to similar experiments by other creatives, most notably Trent Reznor. I would expect Cory to also share what hard date he is able to collect after the fact to give us as complete a case study as possible. Oh and I must start saving my pennies for one of the hand bound editions.

Author’s Thoughts on His Free Content Work Being Re-published

Thomas Gideon — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:39:44 +0000

Via Gnat’s four short links post for today at O’Reilly. Mark Pilgrim explains very clearly that re-publishing without his explicit permission is a large part of the point in him choosing not only an open but a free as in free software license for his book. Important to note that this competitive version only came after his publisher, APress, already had many years to profit from their version alone.

Sony Partners with Smashwords

Thomas Gideon — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:42:24 +0000

I saw this on Wired, a piece by Eliot van Buskirk. Sony is thankfully the lesser part of the story as it turns out. What Smashwords is doing is building a one stop site for self publishing ebooks through partnerships with not only Sony, but also Barnes & Noble and Stanza, among others.

This is actually a competitive offering to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform for doing very much the same thing, except Smashwords is far less limited:

Smashwords says it pays “much higher royalties” than Amazon, distributes to multiple outlets, and does not apply DRM to the eBooks the way Amazon does.

It is unclear whether the lack of DRM applies to Sony who has earned my ire by adopting ePub for its new crop of readers but only after saddling it with DRM. I suspect Sony may be an exception because of the way the article calls out that Sony in particular is accepting submissions worldwide, compared to Amazon which only does so in the US.

van Buskirk concludes with the biggest remaining challenge to innovators like Smashwords, that is filtering. But such a problem to have now that the flood gates have been opened wider for the independent creator and for advocates and fans of open media.

Clive Thompson on the Future of Reading

Thomas Gideon — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:10:18 +0000

Wired has a short editorial from Clive Thompson. It is another thoughtful consideration on the future of the printed book. What I like most about this is how he points out several existing examples that he believes point the way.

But only if publishers adopt Wark’s perspective and provide new ways for people to encounter the written word. We need to stop thinking about the future of publishing and think instead about the future of reading.

The example set by Wark is one of opening a work up for annotation, commentary and discussion. I am a big fan of an idea, the unbook, that considers this to be a valuable emerging model not just for after a book has been published but through its formative process and especially for books that in more traditional models would have gone through several editions.

While Thompson focuses in on the dialogue and discussion, I do like that the question he really is posing is the future of reading. I agree that this is far and away the more useful question when contemplating what is going to thrive as digital technologies disrupt the status quo in publishing.

Doctorow’s Law

Thomas Gideon — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:47:35 +0000

I just watched the video of Cory Doctorow’s talk on eBooks and DRM from the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference. In it, he expressed the desire to have Doctorow’s Law, if ever a thing is coined, to be that if anyone puts DRM, locks, on your works, as a creative, they are not doing so in your best interests. Pretty obvious to consumers and advocates of open media. It is nice to have a shorthand for this idea, though, and I wholeheartedly endorse this coinage.

The rest of his talk does an excellent job of explaining how Audible has turned the tables on publishers. DRM started as a condition required by publishers before they would enter into electronic distribution in many cases. Now, though, Audible is enforcing DRM even in cases where authors and publishers wish to release digital audio editions without locks.

As usual, Cory makes his point with eloquence, charm, and plenty of examples. This talk is well worth a watch.