TeleRead Senior Writer Steve Jordan featured in NY Times article on ebook formats
By Paul Biba
Yes, that’s right and congratulations to Steve!! Let’s hope it creates a huge run on his website. Here’s a short excerpt from the article, Before Choosing an E-Book, Pondering the Format by Peter Wayner.
Steve Jordan, a self-published science fiction novelist, has to make lots of decisions. Although most of them involve plot points, narrative arcs and character development, Mr. Jordan has the added burden of deciding how to deliver the stories he creates to his online audience. …
“I’m already selling six different formats on my Web site,” Mr. Jordan said. “If they have a particular format they prefer, they can usually get it from me.”
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Bravo, Steve!
It is rare to find an ebook-related article in a mainstream media publication that is not starring Google, Amazon, Sony or B & N. … And there’s a nice moment in this article when the writer discovers that Steve publishes his books in “e” formats only, not in paperback. The writer is impressed.
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:46 pm
From the article:
“The Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle, for example, employ power-saving LCD screens…”
Really?
Well, I guess we can’t expect a reporter to get everything right. …sigh…
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:53 pm
I got in touch with the author and it’s being corrected as we speak.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Whoa… sooner than Peter expected it to run! I wonder if all the action, vis-a-vis Google, B&N, new readers, recent sales increases, etc, etc, had a hand in that…
September 24th, 2009 at 1:43 am
Congrats, Steve! Of course I’d have loved the Times to get into issues like the mess that proprietary DRM makes of e-book standards, but Peter’s piece is a start. Glad he got it in!
Thanks,
David
September 24th, 2009 at 7:13 am
Congratulations to Steve Jordan on his publicity coup. Peter Wayner is an extraordinarily knowledgeable journalist and computer expert, and I would be very surprised if the inaccuracy noted above about the screen-type of the Kindle was due to his actions.
Wayner was far ahead of his colleagues in the press when he wrote Java applet simulators to illustrate articles in the New York Times web edition in the 1990s. I remember speaking to him then about the nascent ebook market and the unavoidability of piracy. Wayner noted that even if an ebook file is locked-up cryptographically it would still be possible for pirates to use a “screen scraper” to extract data. The text displayed on a screen could be captured and run through an OCR program to extract the text. I think he is one of the good guys with a byline.
September 24th, 2009 at 7:55 am
I agree: A very good, positive article (even without my being in it!). Compared to many articles which tend to give e-books a back-handed slap of recognition, this one looked clearly at the market (though it’s been pointed out at MobileRead that the article did center overmuch on the Amazon and Sony readers).
BTW: Anyone notice that at the bottom of the article page are links to this thread, and the one on MobileRead? Bump-back to TR!