Comments on: The e-Book Revolution — If At First You Don’t Succeed . . .

By: SiNae Pitts

SiNae Pitts — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:28:02 +0000

Great post, the ebook and CD ROM parallels, and great links. You foreshadowed the “birth of something new” in yesterday’s iPad announcement, as the in-between device. I completely agree this is not a zero sum game, there is room for many players, and room for new ways to read old content and content that used to be one-way (books, movies, games, CD ROMS) can develop into two-way conduits where audience can truly be content creators (as with Web 2.0).

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:47:39 +0000

A good article comparing the current e-book mania to the CD-ROM era can be found here.

By: The week in review – Simmons Student Chapter of ASIS&T

The week in review – Simmons Student Chapter of ASIS&T — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:11:49 +0000

[...] The e-book revolution: if at first you don’t succeed… [...]

By: Numérique & co (22/11/09) « pintiniblog

Numérique & co (22/11/09) « pintiniblog — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:43:07 +0000

[...] The e-Book Revolution – If At First You Don’t Succeed… (source: The Scholarly Kitchen, [...]

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:09:40 +0000

Isn’t that exactly what the pundits quoted in the first paragraph are suggesting? I know you’ve called ePub a dead end, and am glad there are those out there who can see the potential for something new rather than retreading the same mistakes of the CD-ROM era.

By: mikecane

mikecane — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:42:59 +0000

>>>I’m not convinced that Moby Dick is going to be improved by being interrupted by videos of whales, or a background soundtrack of sea shanties.

No one is saying it should be, especially not me. My advocating of digital books is as a new art form in themselves, as you observed from the post you cited.

By: Eoin Purcell

Eoin Purcell — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:27:01 +0000

We are heading into the great age of the webpage alright!

It seems inescapable to me. Why try and reinvent the wheel when consumers are already pleased with the webpage?

Eoin

By: Toby Plewak

Toby Plewak — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:11:46 +0000

I think ebook readers could be having their brief shining moment in the sun because right now they are able to deliver content in a manner that that isn’t available by any other means right now: on a small, light, eyeball-friendly e-ink screen with a super long battery life.

In a couple of years we could all be walking around with eyeball friendly e-ink screens in our pockets that have long battery lives AND access the internet in full color.

If I have a web browser in my pocket, why do I need a new format to deliver “hybridized content that draws from audio, video, and interactive graphics”?

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:10:29 +0000

I’d love to see an actual breakdown across a variety of journals of the number of readers who download a pdf of an article versus the number who download the pdf and access the supplementary material. As you note, the latter is likely a very tiny percentage of the former.

By: Richard Sever

Richard Sever — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:24:09 +0000

Scholarly publishers should also apply the ‘good enough’ maxim here – to the format.

We all now routinely supplement online articles with movies and other content not reproducible in print, but the reality is these are very rarely viewed by readers. The text (and/or figures) delivers the message they want, and they don’t have the time to view anything else.

Since no new interactive format is likely to alter the fact that the production costs of “audio, video, and interactive graphics” are vastly greater than typesetting/mark-up, we should be cautious of adorning content with expensive bells and whistles no-one listens to.