Quote:
Originally Posted by bookman156
I think you're right. It would certainly be better to re-imagine the spirit of the book in the digital medium than just pour the words it into a standard jelly mould, which is what they appear to have done. But re-imagining it would be a big task requiring a lot of interest and dedication. It couldn't be an off-the-shelf production.
At present the ebook format doesn't appear to be good enough to do that, so you'd have to consider doing it in some form that supported this adventurous typography. Otherwise, as you say, just better not to even pretend that it's just a book that can be slung out there in a standard Kindle product.
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So an ebook really is quite limited. At present, the limitations seem to outweigh the advantages, and I wouldn't rush to produce an ebook of a book of mine that was still available cheaply enough in print. But if you just want to be entertained by words then an ebook will suffice. Even in badly produced print books the 'look' of the book tends to fade from sight if it is something one really wants to read. Still, I'd like to have both, aesthetic quality in presentation and ideas. So for me ebooks serve if I have nothing else, and I don't expect them to be much more than words that hopefully have at least been proofread a few times, and even that is expecting too much sometimes.
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That is an interesting perspective. PDF has been around for ages and exactly capture the page of a book and it is also an eBook. Does it meet your requirements for looks or do you demand touch as well? I am thinking we need a Why eBooks? page in the wiki that I may start based on a lot of the information in this thread although it is off topic to the original purpose of the thread. A PDF in many eReaders does offer a zoom which can provide a feature not present in the original which can be useful for images.
I believe the ePub 3 is designed to provide exactly what you asked for and Amazon has gone even further with their version of the fixed page format by allowing zoom of individual elements of the page. All forms of ePub 3 fixed formats can exactly replicate the paper page if you wish and can be even more creative also, if you wish. I do not think that the current format limits creativity.
Also an eBook is much more likely to have errors corrected than a paper book and you can even get updates to the book you already purchased. Try that with a paper book.
Dale