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Originally Posted by Tarana
You can carry hundreds of books on one device and read entire series. Add 'enhancements' and suddenly, each book is so bloated you won't be able to fit the Harry Potter series on one unit.
In the CD and DVD world, enhancements are often just junk to get people to upgrade and buy the CD or DVD again even though the amount of value added is minute.
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This... if I want to clutter my ereader up then I'm perfectly capable of doing it myself... and one of the joys of books has always been that the pictures etc, that I imagine, are far superior to someone else's TV/film portrayal - and this applies to audibooks and radio drama as well...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Merischino
I agree with Prof Adair -- considering that ebooks are all being sold at prices close to or at the cost of the print edition, where the publishers are reaping the profit benefits of eliminating the costs of production and most of the costs of distribution.
I think that if ebooks are going to continue to be sold at these inflated prices then publishers should start doing as much content-enrichment as they can feasibly do without putting undue pressure on ereading devices. Following the transition from VHS to DVD, with the addition of so much more storage space on the new medium film companies began including commentaries, biographies of actors, directors, and producers, alternate endings, and all sorts of neat stuff which purchasers of the DVDs could either watch or ignore as it suited them.
I see no reason why electronic versions of ebooks could or should not also include additional enrichements. Such as, hyperlinks to online content (wikipedia pages for the author, that particular book series, etc.) or embedded audio or video content to supplement the text. In the case of Dan Brown's Inferno, supplementary material on any of the renaissance art and architecture mentioned in the text would have been both easy and cost effective to include.
Other ideas would be images of the actual book jacket information (or included book jacket text and quotes), interviews with the author (video, audio, or text... however originally published), index of related material available in an electronic format (whether for sale or for free for registered purchasers or whatever the "offer" might be), or even a tool for searching for further recommendations based on this book combined with information about other books on your e-device (richer than mass, more targeted to what you are interested in now and across multiple sellers than recommendations would be based only on your purchase history at a particular e-seller)
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Guess you missed out on the pricing breakdowns showing that costs of printing were a minor part of book production compared to little things like actually paying an author...
As for all the "neat" stuff added to DVDs, most people I know rarely view such material and just want to watch the film - most of 'em would be even happier to lose the credits as well...
And for something like Dan Brown's Inferno, well if you want that sort of supplementary material then there's thing called the internet that lets you find it but if you want it added in to the ebook then it isn't going to come free - research, organisation and getting rights to reproduce material don't come cheap so definitely a "no thanks" to that as well...
Text books, manuals and quite a bit of non-fiction could benefit from such additions but again don't forget TANSTAAFL - as above, research, organisation and acquiring rights will all cost so people will still want choice - vanilla book (you know, something to actually read) or enhanced for those who have trouble with just having words and "stationery" pictures in a book...
Nothing against multimedia but my choice as to what to get in that form - we have books, DVDs, streaming video, satellite TV, radio etc - most of us seem to like the differentiation but each to his own as long as that doesn't mean destroying things that we still want...
