From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2012 18:27:06 -0500

The experience with Gutenberg-e makes me skeptical about your
prediction under #3, Jim. Will it become so much cheaper to produce
these more complex post-book apps than it is today that they can be
priced as low as current e-books are and allow publishers to still
make their margins? Maybe this will work for some high-end products
that have a mass audience, like a Hunger Games app, but I can't see it
taking over more specialized niches like scholarly publishing anytime
soon.

Sandy Thatcher


At 6:33 PM -0400 4/8/12, LIBLICENSE wrote:

> From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2012 11:02:55 -0400
>
> Joe, interesting post.  Three thoughts:
>
> 1.  You're quite right that for those of us with a large "installed
> base" of practices and books and notes, the present environment is not
> yet one that offers suitable working space and tools.  The "e-book"
> today is a flat sequential thing, inhospitable to notes, hyperlinks,
> and comparison of multiple objects at the same time.  Lots of things I
> still do only with paper.  But yes, I read on my iPad all the time.
>
> 2.  But look at the comment on SK from a young scholar responding to
> your post by saying essentially "I'm doing fine with e-stuff".  I know
> others in my very bookish tribe who have converted a ton of existing
> books to PDF, shared the work and the product among themselves, and
> are quite happily building careers far more paperlessly than I can
> imagine.  So your point and my first point may reflect facts about us
> rather than about ebooks.
>
> 3.  I probably owe this list an updated Amtrak e-book usage report.
> But I have the feeling that just in the last few months (see the Pew
> report just out) we have entered an unusually volatile period in which
> devices and practices and even the nature of cultural objects are
> changing rapidly.  The PC arrived c. 1983, the graphical browser in
> 1993, the ubiquitously networked PC c. 1985 (with Windows 95), and
> things have been remarkably stable since -- till now.  But the
> smartphone and the tablet and the e-reader and their astonishingly
> rapid takeup bid fair to create a working and living space very
> different from what we've known.  Joe, even you and I won't be the
> same.
>
> So here's my question.  Will the e-book be obsolete in ten years?  I
> think it will.  Or at least retro.
>
> What will replace it is the post-book app.  Words, graphics, video,
> audio, links, "additional features".  Some of them will be "movies"
> with a bunch of stuff added; some of them "books" with stuff added;
> and born-app content that will defy traditional description.  Watch
> for "record albums" that package songs with music videos *and*
> featurettes and games and lyrics -- to get you to buy more and pay
> more than just getting "songs" from iTunes.
>
> It's only because I'm such a stodgy traditionalist that I think it
> will take as long as ten years.
>
> Jim O'Donnell
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 4:56 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>  From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
>>  Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2012 08:07:51 -0700
>>
>>  For a project I have been working on, I have been interviewing a
>>  number of librarians about the use of ebooks on their campuses.  Many
>>  have reported that faculty are often insisting on maintaining print
>>  collections.  Some speculations about this here:
>>
>>  http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/04/e-books-in-the-academy/
>>
>>  I would be interested to learn what features an ideal academic ebook
>>  service would have.
>>
>>  Joe Esposito