Why do many e-books cost more than paperback?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

We do have an alphabet that will stand the test of time. It's called Unicode.

Any ebook that is being archived should really be saved as a simple txt file. That's what I do. Well, actually, I archive my stuff in Ascii txt. I really should switch over.

What Nate said!

Actually, I'm in favor of taking a step forward and declaring HTML a standardized format because it also includes formating cues, but it is still in ASCII. However, all of the code we work with today starts with Unicode. I'd consider it a standard, for sure. As long as data as stored starts in Unicode, programs can get the content back out.

[orcinus]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

But it's not only books we're talking about. Look towards the bigger picture.

But we ARE talking about the books

I've gathered the feeling your problems with migration to newer or different systems etc. were with non-text or book data. And that's a completely different story - you shouldn't generalize.

On top of that, of course you'll have problems if you *start out* with a proprietary, closed format no one can read or write... That's the equivalent of piling books in navajo on your shelves.
Furthermore, of course you'll have problems and additional costs if you have other people or companies do your conversion and archival.
Furtherfurthermore (furthermoremore?), if your hard drive breaks down, it's the equivalent of having your books or notes get splashed by coffee, get burned down or have them disintegrate from a sudden paper mite infestation.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Actually, I'm in favor of taking a step forward and declaring HTML a standardized format because it also includes formating cues, but it is still in ASCII. However, all of the code we work with today starts with Unicode. I'd consider it a standard, for sure. As long as data as stored starts in Unicode, programs can get the content back out.

How about TeX? ;P

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by athlonkmf

and paper would survive the armageddon? I don't think the current printing material would survive that long actually.

I think he meant that sarcastically, athlonkmf, but I had to think about it for a minute before I decided that -- no smilies to clue me in.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

..."'Taint funny McGee!" is a reference to an old radio sitcom, Fibber McGee and Molly....

I've heard of his closet, but I've never heard one of the shows, I'd kinda like to, just to put the closet in context.

[yvanleterrible]

I wouldn't be surprised that paper would survive Armageddon, It's survived wars and passionate witchhunts for a good while now. Mass destruction is now focused on life more than materials. I doesn't make sense to take over a destroyed infrastructure, as long as it isn't occupied any more is better.


Want to hear something ironic? I just took on a contract to build a big office library.

[NatCh]

Congrats on the contract, yvanleterrible!

I suppose whether paper would survive depends some on what form Armageddon actually takes.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I've heard of his closet, but I've never heard one of the shows, I'd kinda like to, just to put the closet in context.

(Okay, imagine you're listening to the show, and McGee mentions that something he has been asked about might be in his closet, and he'll look. Just as you hear the other characters in the room shouting, "Wait, McGee, No!..." you hear the door click open, and immediately a cacophany of noise that signals tons of junk falling out of the closet! Said cacophany could last for most of a minute, ocasionally punctuated by an odd "ding," "poink," or "clangalangalang," until it was finally all over. The original "everything but the kitchen sink--oh, wait, there it is, too--falling out of the stuffed closet" running gag. Cue audience applause.

Just once, I wish I could have been in the studio to watch all of the crap they must have thrown on the sound stage floor to get that noise!)

Umm... what were we talking about?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Want to hear something ironic? I just took on a contract to build a big office library.

Go into the job, hand them a Sony Reader, and say: "Done."

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Go into the job, hand them a Sony Reader, and say: "Done."

You forgot the "Send them a bill" part!

[yvanleterrible]

Oh yeah! A big one too!

[Studio717]

It looks to me like the publishers are using e-books as an ongoing backlist source rather than books that don't sell. Many of the books available are older ones, with a few new releases thrown in to get you into the (online) store.

[nekokami]

I think the situation with data migration has improved over time.

My computer use dates back to accessing a DEC-10 via 300 baud modem. I don't have any files left from those days, but it was only a few years later that I realized the only feasible way I had to transfer a file between two computers (one was an Apple IIGS, I forget now what the other one was, might have been a Commodore 64) was to kermit the files across said 300 baud modem to a mainframe and then kermit them down to the other computer. Ugh.

I still have files from the Apple IIGS, both text and graphic, converted to readable formats. Fortunately, the computers I owned in the intervening times have each been able to read the physical formats of the files from the previous systems, sometimes with extra software help, and I've been forwarding all my content as I go. (Also fortunately, the oldest files are quite small compared to the stuff created by modern applications.) But one of my most difficult experiences recently involved getting some data off of a couple of old 400Kb single-sided floppies that I found and had forgotten to forward during earlier iterations... I found an old Mac in the house that could read the disks, but then it didn't have ethernet or the ability to burn CDROMS. There was too much data to fit on a convenient number of floppies. I've forgotten now how I solved that problem. I think I used a friend's zip drive to get the files to a PC, then transferred them via the house network to the Mac, whence I backed them up onto CDROM.

But the past couple of computers I've gotten have been Macs, and they have this great feature where you attach the new mac to the old one via a firewire cable, and it sucks across all the data and applications from your old mac. Cool! (Though it missed all the stuff in the mini-website-- I had to go back and copy that manually.) I just hope Ubuntu or other Linuxes start to offer comparable functionality, as I'm starting to wonder if I want to stay with Apple, due to costs.

To try to give a point to this long-winded ramble, it used to be very difficult to transfer data from one system to another, but the physical and digital formats are starting to be more interchangeable, there's lots of conversion software available on the internet now even for very old formats and orphaned software, and I think if one is willing to keep migrating the files forward, it should be possible to retain data for much longer than the life of any of the individual technologies. That gives me a lot of hope for ebooks.

(And if nothing else, one can always save data to a website and hope that the Internet Archive catches it for you. )

[kovidgoyal]

scp -rfp root@oldcomputer:/home/* /home

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

We do have an alphabet that will stand the test of time. It's called Unicode.

Any ebook that is being archived should really be saved as a simple txt file. That's what I do. Well, actually, I archive my stuff in Ascii txt. I really should switch over.

What you should do is archive your ebook in HTML. HTML is a standard that most programs will read and you can keep it formatted so you don't lose the ToC, the attributes, and the graphics. Converting to plain text loses too much to make it worth it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

See! This reasoning is something I look on as a flaw. If it's so easy to change standards and languages, how are we to keep a durable one? That is what we need, something that will stand the test of time like alphabet!

(It's not personnal JS, just an immediate example. Forgive me if it startled you)

I know the problem is too many companies want their piece of the pie so they think ... If we create our own format, then anyone who purchases our reader will have to purchase books from us.

That's wrong. We want a format that we know is going to be well supported even if the company was to go under. But, the BD example I gave is a good one because if there ever is this ONE format someday, just create the output for BD, output it and you're done. The problem is too many formats. Mobi, LIT, LRF, PDB, FB2, IMP, WOLF, PDF just to name a few. Why do we have so many different ebook formats? Why do we need so many? Can't we just have one that isn't going to impose DRM on us?

[orcinus]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

I wouldn't be surprised that paper would survive Armageddon, It's survived wars and passionate witchhunts for a good while now.

Yeees, just look at the library of Alexandria