Yesterday I was a bit harsh in my evaluation of a couple of new models for writing, authoring, and publishing books. Today several other new ideas caught my attention that don't push my "bullshit" button.
Foreword This Week reported that The Wall Street Journal reported that HarperCollins has announced an as-yet-unnamed imprint that will not accept returns from buyers, nor will they pay authors advances. Okay, so this is just a bit late for rumor that smacks of a late April Fool's Day joke. Maybe the new imprint will be graphic novels, and will be eased by the existing no-returns, no-exchanges comic book sales model.
Forward also announced "Digital Book 2008." Wow, standards for digital books. One of the sponsors listed is Adobe, so maybe they can actually make this work. DRM in music is failing, and books cannot be performed live (most, anyway). What is the future of a true digital book? A DRM-based Kindle, or the ubiquitous PDF? Given the disposable nature of mass market paperbacks, an advertising-based model could work (chapter headers, rather than embedded, I hope). Long disquisitions won't be such an easy sell. But those might be worth paper, outside class use.
Boing Boing reports on We Tell Stories: web-native storytelling from Penguin. These look pretty good, and, if not exactly innovative, it is certainly innovative for a mainstream "classics" imprint to be making these available. I read the first "chapter" of "The 21 Steps" and will probably read the next. Slick.
And, Todd Bryant at Academic Commons announced Sophie 1.0, a "multimedia authoring tool released under a creative commons license." The comments indicate that the tool is definately a 1.0 version. Looks like something I might check out at 1.5 or 2.0. I hope it will last that long.
Goodnight
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