the future of the book, as foreseen in an LA Times articles and in a The Millions interview with a book pirate:
LA Times: "Apple's tablet and the future of literature" - by Daniel Akst
here some key lines:
"It's been clear for a while, of course, that the future of text is digital. .. "Tablets will also change the nature of books. .. Shorter is always better on screen, and so expect shorter books. Many nonfiction works are too long anyway -- think of all those cinder-block-sized biographies -- in part because right now there's no mechanism for bringing to market anything between a magazine article (perhaps 5,000 words) and a short book (perhaps 70,000). Tablets will allow the length of works to be tailored more closely to the need. .. These changes may actually help revive the mysterious and forever expiring beast known as literature. "
a theme that isn't picked up in the LA essay is: pirate copies of digitalized books. click to The Millions for that: they did an interview with someone who copies, uploads, and downloads books: "Confessions of a book pirate" by Max Magee.
"For several years, it seemed as though the book industry was getting a reprieve. As the music industry was ravaged by file sharing, and the film and TV industry were increasingly targeted by downloaders, book piracy was but a quaint cul de sac in the vast file sharing ecology."
(from the inteview): "Since books are generally very small files, they can be downloaded in minutes. You can then convert the file using one of many applications, for instance Mobipocket Creator, to PRC or another format that works with your reader. You can then plug your Kindle into your computer and copy the file over. The entire process typically takes 5-10 minutes. ..
I think most of the filesharing community feels that the record industry is a vestigal organ that will slowly fall off and die – I don’t know to what extent that feeling would extend to publishing houses since they are to some extent a different animal."
.
No comments:
Post a Comment