TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for February, 2007

By Chris Meadows

In an interesting postscript to my prior entry about the Storyteller’s Bowl model of publishing, someone is now trying that model out in the tabletop roleplaying game industry. Philip Reed, president of the Ronin Arts publishing company, has pledged to create an open-game-licensed game system called FASERIP (short for “Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, Psyche,” the character attributes it uses), compatible with the old Marvel Super Heroes roleplaying game, in return for $1000 in donations. This game system would only include the core rules, with no extraneous copyrighted or trademarked material, in much the same way as Wizards of the Coast’s Source Reference Documents; it would be released as a free PDF, and subsequently made available in printed form at cost. At the time of this writing, the project website had reached $500 in pledges from 26 donors in its first 24 hours; there is a $10 per donor minimum pledge.

When I emailed Reed to ask what sort of license he would be using, he replied,

I’m still trying to decide which license will be best but it will be completely open for use; I will not be claiming a copyright or trademark on the material.

I want to be sure that the FASERIP system is available for anyone to use in any way that they wish.

He also clarifies in a thread in the LiveJournal Roleplayers community that, though he does not own the rights to the old Marvel RPG, there are legal methods of creating a similar and compatible system, which he intends to use. I do not know whether this is the first Storyteller’s-Bowl-style project offered in the tabletop industry, but it is the first I have run across since I originally wrote my journal entry suggesting that its use in the tabletop game industry might be a good idea.

It may actually be a misnomer to call FASERIP a Storyteller’s Bowl project, as unlike most such works, it is being financed in a single piece. However, the shorter length of this type of work would not lend itself to splitting into chapters. It does have more in common with the Storyteller’s Bowl than the Street Performer Protocol, since donations are taken before the creation of the work, rather than after.

By David Rothman

It’s about time. eBay’s record in protecting intellectual property is disgraceful. As shown by a screen shot from last August, the Potter books are not the only titles pirated.

One partial solution for the Potter books: Letting legal copies go on the Net for e-book fans.

Related: eBay- and Potter-related article from the Times in the U.K. Also see earlier TeleBlog items on eBay, Potter and piracy.

By David Rothman

Please note that such efforts are nothing new. Some Slashdot readers are underwhelmed.

By David Rothman

“…Digimarc has now patented watermarking technology that then alerts the copyright holder that its content is being used. Of course, given the earlier discussion about how the technology isn’t particularly good, this patent seems more likely to hurt the watermarking concept than help it.” – Techdirt.

Related: The e-copyright debate and a Microsoft alum’s new watermark service.

Just how will the Digimarc patent affect Infoflows (photo of Infoflows head Steve Stone)? I much prefer watermarking to the usual Draconian DRM, but Techdirt is still raising useful questions.

By David Rothman

Six candidates are vying for an IDPF board seat—Samir Kakar (Techbooks), Craig Miller (LibreDigital), Jon Noring (DigitalPulp Publishing), Matt Shatz (Random House), Malle Valle (Harlequin Enterprises) and Eli Willner (Green Point Technology Services).

Voting will end on March 13. The seat was opened up after the resignation of Kelley Allen of Random House from the board of the leading digital publishing trade organization.

So what are the four biggest issues that the candidates, whose biographies and platforms you can read by clicking on their links, should be addressing?

Related challenges for e-bookdom

First, e-books need to be made easier to find, buy, read and truly own. The great DRM and format controversies are subsets of the usability issue since both copy protection and the Tower of eBabel can wreak havoc on people’s enjoyment of e-books. Granted, the IDPF doesn’t and shouldn’t get involved in matters such as e-book displays, but it can help in such areas as durable and comprehensive standards to promote ease of use—either on its own or, as I’d prefer, within an OASIS technical committee.

Second, the e-book industry needs to be better at growing revenue and earnings—both for e-book-only publishers and those putting out both p- and e-books. I’m mentioning this issue second only because no one will make money if e-books aren’t easy enough to to use. (more…)

By David Rothman

So, gang, what do you think about the pros and cons? Browsing means better shopping, but, look, I want to own e-books for real.

That counts even more than social networking-related features or tie-ins. So let’s hope that the E-Book Museum approach won’t replace downloadable files.

Reuters has the details about the Random House and HarperCollins experiments with browsing:

Random House, whose writers include Danielle Steel and Norman Mailer, said on Tuesday it will let consumers search and browse through more than 5,000 of its titles on the Internet through a new service called Insight.

Random House is also introducing a tool allowing users to add material from titles to personal pages on social networks such as MySpace or to a retailer’s Web site…

HarperCollins Publishers, whose authors include Michael Crichton, on Monday said it was introducing a browse function that lets consumers embed pages of books onto networking sites such as MySpace….

I couldn’t get the RH feature working when I tried it just now on the TeleBlog. Could the book-browser have been there, but invisible to me for want of the latest Flash? Or are there other problems, maybe WordPress-related?

Related news: Via Google.

By David Rothman

“If e-books are marginal, their impact will be small. If they are to be successful, they may have to be much cheaper than printed books. If they are much cheaper, they could well undercut both publisher and author incomes. Only a substantial increase in additional unit sales will pay for what e-books may well do to p-books.” – Ethan Ellenberg, a literary agent.

The TeleRead take: Amen! This may not be what some e-book boosters want to hear, but that’s the reality—and one reason why I’m so keen on global literacy programs, the $100 laptop project, and well-stocked digital national library systems with fair compensation for copyright holders. (more…)

By David Rothman

Will a $165 e-paper machine—similar to the Sony Reader—actually hit the market in late fall or winter of ‘07? And will a front-light fit over the reflective screen for when you’re in dim light? Here are the specs:

Project of the device for reading electronic books
Screen: 6 “SVGA Electronic Paper Display (not E Ink Corporation)
CPU: ARM7, 73 MHz
SRAM: 1,0 Mb
ROM: 256 Mb (it is used 248 Mb)
USB 2.0
SD/MMC: up to 2.0 GB
Formats: TXT, XML (FB2), RTF, JPEG, GIF, BMP
Weight: 185 gram
Retail price: 165 Usd
The beginning of sales: IV-2007

I’m skeptical because of the price, among other things—remember, Sony intends to make money off its BBeB books, not just the $350 Sony Reader. And why isn’t the Net abuzz with the news following a post in a MobileRead forum on February 8? Even so, April Fool’s Day is still more than a month from now, and you never know. (more…)

By David Rothman

The war against the TeleMice is at the Afghanistan stage, with the foe no longer quite in charge but still hiding in the caves—er, behind bookshelves and the like.

Carly and I keep baiting two black Victor electronic traps—on the kitchen floor—with Jif peanutbutter. We’re also relying on a mix of old-fashioned spring traps and glue traps elsewhere, not to mention countertop cleanings and the rest. And, yes, we’ll welcome further advice from fellow mouse-hunters. Body count so far is 10+ as the war goes on against second-gen enemies.

With bin Laden-relentless rodents and other distractions stealing blog time, it’s good to see posts from Jon (on XHTML/CSS e-books) and Chris (on Erics Flint’s DRM and biz-model thoughts). Keep it up, guys, and I’ll welcome others pitching in.

Sunday’s TeleLinks

Captured and processed in line with international standards for humaneness, just like the e-Victors’ instant zapping of the mice, here are some Sunday links.

–Students Say Locker Size Is Cramping Their Style (Washington Post)—one of the many arguments for e-book in K-12. My favorite tidbit: “William Schmidt, a professor at Michigan State University, blames textbooks. He is an expert on the size and weight of American school texts. ‘Worldwide, we have the biggest textbooks that exist in mathematics and science,’ he said. Middle school books often top 700 pages, he said, because publishers attempt to include all the material taught in several of the largest states. ‘We are so far off the scale, in terms of what we expect our kids to lug around.’” Time for the ASPCA to expand its mission to protect school kids from overgrown p-books? (more…)

By Chris Meadows

I first noticed these columns when Slashdot pointed out the most recent one (albeit with an incorrect writeup claiming Flint said “DRM causes piracy.” But then, that’s about par for the course for Slashdot “journalism”), but I had been familiar with Flint’s writings about so-called “piracy” from the days of his “Prime Palavers” back when the Baen Free Library and Webscriptions first started up. Happily, the years since then have only given Flint time to expand upon and develop his themes, and all six columns are well worth reading. The first three are an examination of copyright and term length, the fourth looks at the principle of Fair Use, and the fifth and sixth focus more closely on DRM.

In the sixth editorial in Flint’s column entitled “Salvos Against Big Brother,” Flint expounds upon the thesis that, by creating conditions of scarcity and inconvenience, DRM provides added incentive to otherwise honest people to download material illicitly. He points to the seven years that his first novel, Mother of Demons, has been available freely from Baen without damaging print sales, and arguably promoting them.

(more…)

By Jon Noring

Today on CNET, Opera’s CTO Håkon Wium Lie (portrait at right) critically looks at both Microsoft’s Office Open XML and the Open Document Format. He describes both as essentially “memory dumps with angle brackets.” Instead, he believes that the better way is to build upon the long-universal standards of XHTML and CSS.

To demonstrate this, he and co-author Bert Bos wrote a book (published by Addison-Wesley Professional) entirely mastered in XHTML and CSS3, using the powerful Prince application for direct conversion of the master to PDF for the print book edition.

An example chapter from their book is available online: one view optimized for online reading, and one view optimized for online printing. Both versions are derived from essentially the same XHTML document as used in the high-quality Prince-generated print version, showing the flexibility of this approach.

(Also look at this beautifully styled online article written by Bert and Håkon.)

The future of e-books?

The ramifications to the future of the digital publication industry (including e-books) are significant. The reason is that this approach begins to merge the two worlds of online reading using web browsers with the traditional world of fixed-page formats primarily intended for print. It is now possible to reach both worlds from the same XML-based source because of the new CSS3 properties.

(more…)

By David Rothman

Is this building—headquarters of the U.S. Patent Office—a crime scene? Or maybe the U.S. Congress is instead?

Imagine intellectual property laws that require Microsoft to pay $1.52B in an MP3-related patent suit. Yes, at least for now, I’ll take Microsoft’s side even though the company itself is an eBabler in love with proprietary technology. This ruling for Alcatel-Lucent could affect many companies beyond Microsoft.

Let’s hope that Microsoft can successfully appeal and also that the e-book business won’t suffer such rude surprises, which it just might over issues such as DRM systems.

Related: Google News roundup here. Techmeme roundup here. Also see Dana Gardner’s observations.

By David Rothman

This one was set for today, but for time reasons I’ll go with it over the weekend. Stay tuned.

By David Rothman

Donkeys and camels bring books to kids in Kenya, but is there a better way in many cases—potentially offering far, far more titles? Consider the Children’s Machine.

First the naysayers said the $100 laptop—and, yes, the price will drop from today’s $140 or so—would never happen. Now the debate is shifting. How will traditional educators live with a machine that encourages kids to self-teach in line with the philosophy of constructivism? And what about the actual long-term costs of the machines—e-book-friendly and much more—for cash-strapped developing countries?

Iraq costs vs. the Children’s Machine

Walter Bender, president of software and content for One Laptop per Child, addresses those issues in an MP3 from one of my favorite public radio programs, Open Source Radio, which also has a lively blog-based discussion of the project. No mentions of laptops vs. camels. But among other points, Bender notes that “one year’s worth of the war in Iraq would provide a laptop for every school-age child on the planet.” Current Iraq expenditures by the U.S. are about $6.4 billion per month. Bender has suggested that many governments and organizations could pitch in to help pay OLPC bills.

TeleBlog commenter Wayan Volta also on OLPC program

Open Source host Christopher Lydon also talks to Wayan Vota of OLPC News and the Geekcorps and Ethan Zuckerman, founder of Geekcorps. Both are rooting for the laptop project to succeed but have raised excellent questions about costs and other issues such as the super-crucial one of content. (more…)

By David Rothman

Can you hide behind an IP address and smear someone via Wikipedia?

That’s what a nameless poster apparently did to Fuzzy Zoeller, a golf champ keen on a positive Web image. Now he’s taking a swing at the offender via a lawsuit, the results of which might be relevant someday to comments posted in interactive e-books.

The just-made Wikipedia link to Zoeller’s name does not include the claim that he abused alcohol and drugs and beat his wife. Wikipedia volunteers strive to remove libelous references, as was done here. (more…)

By David Rothman

Some dinos in the news business are trying hard to turn into mammals—for example, with savvy use of talent from readers in the best Web 2.0 tradition. But would you believe, some other newspapers are actually getting worse in various ways?

Even if you’ve downloaded the Microsoft-created Times Reader for the New York Times, you’ll still have to mess with separate programs for the Seattle-Post Intelligencer, the Daily Mail, and the Forbes. How many other newspapers and magazines will replicate this folly? Let’s hope they keep HTML editions. Meanwhile check out great responses from jkOnTheRun and MobileRead.

What a horrid example for e-book publishers. I doubt that we’ll see HarperCollins e-reading software competing against incompatible programs from S&S or Wiley, but you never know.

Detail, in regard to the first paragraph: No, reader-created content isn’t a panacea, but I love Gannett’s attempt to ferret out readers who are true experts on topics in the news. Tomorrow the TeleBlog will run an essay from a community journalist relying on reader contributions.

By David Rothman

Update, 2:43 p.m.: The site replied that it had removed the illegal copies, but then I saw a James Bond novel. Sorry again, guys. – DR.

What a cool mix—a social site for sharing e-texts on mobile phones, with votes on the most popular titles, reader comments, tagging, and now many thousands of Gutenberg books. The hottest items right now? Well, I’ll list ‘em and provide the URL, but not until the site removes Bill Bryson’s best-seller A Short History of Nearly Everything. Whoops. I also see the full text of a John Grisham novel, The Chamber.

If you dislike DRM as much as I do, then it helps to avoid giving the other side ammo. This otherwise laudable site does, alas. It will be interesting to see how long until the copyrighted material comes down. I assume that the site just isn’t monitored as well as it could be. Please, guys. Do something. Yes, I’ll contact the site owner or owners to see what happened.

Good free vs. bad free

Free copyrighted e-books are fine if they’re part of a campaign to promote the paper titles, but that model won’t always work, and e-bookers should respect the intellectual property rights of authors and publishers using conventional models. (more…)