Hand Made High Tech
Throughout 2011, if:book Australia commissioned essays from ten Australian writers on the future of writing and reading in a future tilted towards the digital. Each writer drew on his or her experience in fields diverse as publishing, transmedia, gaming, and comics to observe the changes taking place in ‘books’ and discussing where this might lead for authors, readers, and reading culture.
Originally posted at the if:book web site, the articles have now been compiled (some updated) into a single volume under the title Hand Made High Tech with an introduction by me and a brilliant cover design by Daniel Neville.
It’s free to download in any format or to read online. If you have any interest in books and publishing futures, it’s worth a read. Check it out.
Read MoreOff the Record Now Available in Digital
After much technical jiggery-pokery, Off The Record is now available in digital form, including the Kindle store for all you kindlers out there. The book is also coming soon to Apple iBookstore and Google eBooks.
In time it will also be available from all major vendors, including Baker & Taylor, B&N, Borders, Bowker, Ebooks.com, Ebrary, Follett Digital Resources, Kobo, Lightning Source (Ingram), Netlibrary, Overdrive, Sony, and Tecknoquest.
The ebook for Off the Record will be available to customers worldwide, so if you have had any trouble finding yourself a print copy (you obviously haven’t tried here), now is your chance to pick yourself up copy in fully recyclable pixels.
Read MoreConfessions of an accidental print fetishist
Things appear to be speeding up in the digital publishing world and finally the eBook is beginning to matter. No sooner does Apple announce their contribution to the continuing argument around what an e-reader should actually do than Amazon and MacMillan dive at each other’s throats in a way that would make even shareholders blanch. MacMillan won the stoush, but only because Amazon (somewhat uncharacteristically) caved. Nevertheless, this is a sign of things to come. Both publishers and technology vendors want control of the market. Which means the product is important. Who would have thought?
For so many years everyone dabbled in digital publishing, whether as an insurance policy or through Quixotic righteousness. Suddenly the big six are in the game and Amazon is attempting to impose its vision on the rest of the world whether through muscle or threats, while Apple attempt to make a product that will hit the market like a neutron bomb.
I have a sense that the current rash of insanity from the big end of town is still premature. No offence to the people who already enjoy their Kindle or Sony, but everything hinges on Apple selling truckloads of iPads. And I’m yet to be convinced they will. I wouldn’t call the device underwhelming—it does a hell of a lot for its price tag—but I still suspect the device—like all e-readers—solves a problem that doesn’t exist. It’s a better overall package than the Kindle, no question, but can it possibly live up to all that promise?
Then again, my partner mentioned something pretty enlightening the other day (she does that sometimes):
‘If they offered, say, ten free eBooks with the iPad, I’d definitely consider buying one. For much the same price you get all the books and the computer.’
I’m yet to see evidence that they will offer this, but it would seem to be an easy enticement to generate sales, even though the iPad’s price—especially in Australia—will be well off the price of ten books.
So where does all this leave tiny, single artist-operated ventures like mine? To be honest I don’t know. The title of this post comes from the sense that, in my championing of the PDF format as the most appropriate digital publishing platform, I have been thinking of the ultimate reading device as a static book-like thing where the publisher controls all aspects of the experience: the text, the formatting, the font, the page breaking. Since reading more and more on my iPhone apps Stanza and the gorgeous Classics, I’ve actually realised that texts need to be far more flexible and publishers (and authors) need to hand over to the reader their control of font, text sizing, and layout. If a reader wants my stories in magenta coloured Comic Sans on a raging red background, who am I to say no?
In offering beautifully formatted and strictly tamper-proof PDFs of my stories from this site, have I missed a fairly important point about the experience of reading on screen? Am I just limiting my potential readership? Am I shooting myself in the foot?
More and more, I suspect so.
Read MoreJust don't call it a tablet
So, the iPad is here and along with it the words words words of people rushing to pass judgement on a device based on little more than watching Steve Jobs wave it around for an hour or so.
Oh, alright that’s harsh, but even for someone with a deep appreciation of Apple’s products and design, I find the obsequious fervour of many commentators hard to stomach and my immediate response is to look for holes in Apple’s PR veneer. None of which stops me from actually buying their stuff. I mean, seriously, look at the the alternatives. I guess what I’m talking about is an instinctive distrust of being sold something. I don’t like TV advertising, I long for a world without car salespeople or real estate agents, and I hold a special loathing for blind brand worship.
Pointless ranting that brings me to the part of today’s iPad media blitz that most interests me: the announcement of iBooks. Unfortunately, little time has been spent on the iBook concept other than to show the application that looks an awful lot like the Classics app for the iPhone (apparently pinched, rather than bought, from the original developer…nice). It’s integrated with the iBookshop that looks like a nice extension of the App Store or the iTunes store. I guess for those reasons the iBook part wasn’t considered as important perhaps as other features like…oh I don’t know, take your pick.
So I’m reserving judgement. Readability and ease of use are givens. The texts will be beautiful, the page turning seamless, even the feel in your hand and ease of use in various book-reading staples (bed, the loo, the couch); all of this will work just fine. That’s Apple’s bread and butter and they won’t disappoint. No, what interests me is whether iBooks are proprietary bought-and-owned experience that limits a reader’s adaptability. Can iBooks be read only on Apple’s app? Can one download iBooks from anywhere and sync them to the iPad? Can a keen reader create their own iBooks from, say, PDF files? How easily can independent authors and publishers access the tools for create and distributing iBooks?
That’s the keynote I would have liked to see from Steve, but I understand his primary audience is roughly fifty-fifty tech-geeks and Wall Street.
That’s alright. Authors are nothing if not patient.
Read MoreCultural Learnings from Amazon
Okay, so I’ve been through the process of transmogrifying text into Kindle friendly format. It’s not too difficult to do, but there are a couple of significant things to note:
Alas, people outside the US can do everything except sell Kindle-formatted texts. Amazon requires a US bank account to complete the final stage of the process. There are unofficial mutterings that this will soon change, so watch this space.
The formatting process is pretty easy and they take the time to display exactly how the text will look on a Kindle: handy when you don’t actually have one yourself. But it looks like sales will be tightly controlled through Amazon themselves; no flogging the formatted texts for sale on…say…your own e-commerce web site. I’m not surprised. Amazon have made it clear that the Kindle is a closed ecosystem. You want in, you play by their rules. It’s their device, so I don’t begrudge them doing what they like, but it does occur to me that when you combine a closed sales system that with a proprietary format and DRM, the net effect would be lower sales.
In his recent article for the Monthly, John ‘Satan’s Work’ Birmingham argues that modest e-book features for the iPhone are already superior in quality to the Kindle and that the rumoured tablet, if let loose, would render all this mucking about with Kindle format useless anyway. I’m not so sure. The iPhone App store is just as closed as Amazon’s and the tools for creating and displaying texts are wrapped up in software developer hell: the kind of place that terrifies even more techie writers like myself.
It’s not a DIY thing.
At the moment, formatting your text for the iPhone involves actually creating your own e-reader application. This means not only a greater initial outlay to hire someone to develop the application for you, but also that different texts use their own systems and rules governing how the text is displayed, how pages are turned, etc. Lack of consistency between titles doesn’t seem that great to me. While I read a lot of text on the iPhone, I have only bought a handful of e-books for it, and I haven’t really read them yet, mainly because the titles available (typically public domain classics) haven’t really grabbed me.
That fact though that these discussions are finally happening suggests that the e-reader may finally finally be maturing into something people might want to actually invest in. That’s a positive. Conditions are ripe for a kick-arse reader to capture the popular imagination and possibly to allow writers the means to reach a wider audience.
All we need now is the right device.
Read MoreThe Books
