They are not making an investment with their purchase, they are renting. A physical book can be signed, manipulated, and resold.

Kevin Kelly new media prediction that echoes why I use MemexPlex for logging my research.

eBooks and The Science Community

Carl Zimmer, Tom Levenson, David Dobbs, John Dupuis

Different perspectives. Author of ebook, someone writing an ebook, and librarian with books that don’t go up on shelves.

Carl Zimmer

·         wrote first book in 1998. eBooks were the future, but vanished with dot-com bust.

·         eBook graph is skyrocketing while publishing is used to slow gently declining graphs.

·         Smashwords: publish and distribute books.

·         Put together an ebook as just a book, text: OR put book together as an app.

·         David Eagleman – example of book with media

·         Marcus Chown – Solar System ebook

·         These super dynamic ebooks are not books, they aren’t linear, they are encyclopedias with articles.

Tom Levenson

·         “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

·         After Gutenberg invention there were millions of books, before there were only thousands.

·         Gutenberg Moment: explosion of data

·         Birth of book trade, birth of audience, new occupation of writers.

·         Becoming of the Books – recommended book on the growth of the book trade

·         Emergence of copyright law.

·         Half of books were religious, ten percent were law, and ten percent were science.

·         Each development in the media has unpredictable impacts on the genres and creative expression.

·         When you get cheap paper, you get newspapers and pulp novels.

·         What new genres will emerge from the ebook? ME: A hypertext document. Collection of quotes, links to authors and indexes.

·         Appbooks are a different medium. ME: But they are no different from websites.

·         Book isn’t dead. There are niche books. Cory Doctorow sells books in all different mediums.

·         We are at a Lumier Brother’s stage in app books, it’s enough to show simple tricks, but that won’t last, we need to go more substansive.

David Dobbs

·         Writing a regular book, but is also working on an app book version of it.

·         Slider to change gene varables to watch genes turn on and off.

·         Illustrations eliminate words. Books has words, which get eliminated in the app.

·         Different marketing versions of the book: basic ebook  $10, app book $15, cheaper modules $3

John Dupuis

·         Will spend $100,000 on ebooks this year, mostly computer science and engineering.

·         Authors and publishers are often suspicious of librarians because their job is to provide access to content to people who can’t afford it or won’t pay for it.

·         What is the ebook business model? It will go the same route as the music industry. People will still pay for books, but in an itunes model.

·         What’s the sharing model for apps? It works on your ipad now, but what will it work on 10 years from now. Will historians of writing be able to access the Elements a hundred years from now.

·         Apps allow monetizing every reading transaction, and that is evil.

Questions:

·         Nancy Schuler: writing ipad text for National Geographic, love you graphics designers

·         ME: Google Android version of books?

·         JA Konrath: making money with DIY publishing

·         Comment: I don’t want you wasting time working on apps if it detracts from your time spent crafting good writing.

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