“All publicity is good publicity, even if it is illegal,” writes Patti Waldmeir in the Financial Times. So she thinks that the pirates “did the Potter publishers a favour.”
Along the way, she takes a swipe at e-books: “Reading electronic books is no fun at the best of times: only the stingiest fan would prefer 759 pages of scarcely legible Potter online to the $18 Amazon version.”
Leak didn’t kill sales
While the above is heresy to us e-bookers, most TeleBlog regulars would probably agree with her belief that the leak of the ending didn’t kill sales. And big bookstores don’t think the piracy hurt. I wonder if they’ll feel the same when e-books are a mass phenomenon. Hardware is improving and the Tower of eBabel is under attack by the IDPF–two good signs pointing to that outcome.
Irony-rich
The Waldmeir pieces goes on a tad before we run smack against the FT pay wall: “The rest of this article is for FT.com subscribers only.”
Oh, the ironies here. Meanwhile the FT can thank the TeleBlog for the favour.
Speaking of pay walls: Talk is growing that the N.Y. Times may discontinue its $50-a-year TimesSelect Service. I’ll confess I’m a subscriber. The archival access can be rather useful, and I like being able to save articles to my own little private page online. It will be interesting to see if that vanishes along with the service, assuming the speculation is on the mark. See Slate and the New York Post.
If you define eBooks as photographed pages of a paper book which are then read in some sort of photo viewer, I certainly agree that reading eBooks would not be an overwhelmingly pleasant experience. Fortunately, this isn’t the only possible viewing technology for most eBooks.
The PDF mentality, which is still common in eBooks and which seems designed to make eBooks look like photographic representations of paper books, unfortunately perpetuates this problem.
If, on the other hand, you get an eBook formatted for your device, eBook reading can be a very enjoyable experience. I find I can read faster and with better comprehension on my eBookWise than with paper books. Of course being able to change font size doesn’t bother my aging eyes at all.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
P.S. congratulations on the new design. Hope it works out for you.