|
What I really thought was cool was that Gaiman offered up most of his most popular novels and asked his fans which one to put online.
The fact that a rather popular author would do this is pretty encouraging. Sure the format is not ideal, but I think it shows that some people are trying to figure out how to make ebooks *work*.
I think a limited, rather uncomfortable format like HC's website won't hurt the real paper book sales at all. Authors could give stuff like this away for free and it might even work as ads for paid downloads or pbook sales.
Implementation certainly could be better, but that can come with time. And as a free offer, I'm more in the mood to point out suggested areas of improvement, rather than complain that the offering is not ideal.
As more mainstream authors try things like this, I get more hopeful that an IP friendly solution for digital content is not far off.
|