Douglas_Fevens said on: March 12, 2010, 5:11 am

emphasized text Mr. Reilly, in a letter dated November 17, 2009 to me, Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” Martin, University of Wisconsin-Madison stated:

“While the University is not a party to this agreement, [Google Book Settlement] we are closely adhering to all aspects of the agreement as they apply to authors and publishers.”

Professor David Nimmer [http://www.law.ucla.edu/home/index.asp?page=642] said in a submission to the February 18, 2010 Google Book Settlement Fairness Hearing [Pages 44-50 of the transcript found here: http://thepublicindex.org/docs/case_order/fairness-hearing-transcript.pdf.]

“In other words, the parties are saying the settlement agreement is lawful because the settlement agreement says that the settlement agreement is lawful. Well, that is complete sophistry, your Honor, and it turns copyright law on its head.” [Page 46 - Lines 6-9]

It would seem Mr Reilly that Chancellor Martin maybe “closely adhering” to an illegal document. As the University of Wisconsin - Google partnership is a de facto commercial enterprise, I expect an apology for your infringement of my copyrights to Fevens, a family history.

Douglas Fevens, Halifax, Nova Scotia (If you are interested I have a blog here at Madison.com I call “University of Wisconsin-Google Digitization Project.” The quickest way to find it is by clicking on “Douglas_Fevens” above and going to “My Groups.”)

Douglas Fevens, Halifax, Nova Scotia— The University of Wisconsin, Google, & Me

Amazon has a similar policy regarding reader-posted content, and Yahoo at least used to have such a policy regarding photos.

Fran

Something that is definitely not so likely to survive is the payment of transaction fees/levees on photocopying in educational and other forms of libraries. Hence the world wide push by the holders of these statutory license ‘rights’ to take over rights that are not so likely to become extinct.

I like (some) graphic novels too, but they have been published by large publishers for a long time in the form of comic books. In fact many graphic novels are still published in series, like comic books, with the intention of later assembly into a book. “Graphic novel” is just a marketing term indicating that this is material suitable for adults and often with serious subject matter. The commercial-breakthrough graphic novel is often considered to be Art Spiegelman’s Maus, which began to be published as a series of underground comics (the former marketing term for serious, often subversive comics) in 1980. However, I have copies of the graphic novels forming Will Eisner’s Contract with God trilogy, which he started publishing in the 1970s, though I didn’t read it at the time; I was reading underground comics in the 1970s, for example, the Furry Freak Brothers.

Many of the graphic novel writers have a decidedly commercial outlook: Neil Gaiman, for example, who writes for DC Comics, among others, and who started writing comics in the mid 1980s.

What I am getting at is, people talk about Internet book sales as a whole new world, self-publishing as a whole new world, etc., as if these will somehow magically made up for whatever opportunities are being destroyed in the old publishing world. In fact, both have been around for a long time (self-publishing is the original publishing form), they have track records, and it is already possible to tell whether they work miracles or not. They don’t.

Print-on-demand is affordable enough that e-books don’t really offer any additional opportunities to self-publishers (and self-publishers used offset printing before POD; I still use offset). The Internet provides new publicity opportunities but because publicity venues are so scattered, and often inherently labor intensive, it doesn’t make up for the review opportunities lost with the demise of some of the large review publications and the problems encountered by many large-city daily newspapers who used to have substantial book-review sections—who are, by the way, discovering that they really can’t get enough money from Internet advertising to support themselves. With magazines wanting e-rights for nothing, journalism doesn’t pay most writers anything worthwhile these days.

Some people who know nothing about publishing have this pie-in-the-sky attitude, that (a) all writers work just for fun or are supported by other handsomely paying jobs. Fact: Not by a long shot. And/or (b) if the structure of publishing is set up so that writers are not paid by readers, money will magically appear for them, “grants or something.” Just as long as readers get all their entertainment and information free, they don’t care whether or not someone else pays, it just makes them feel better to assert it.

But, publishing is a business and writing is a profession. Few people start (or maintain) an expensive, labor-intensive business or profession with the assurance that maybe, someday, someone undesignated will pay them some entirely unspecified amount in return for their large investment of capital and/or labor. Meanwhile, what money there is to earn from a book is generally earned in dribbles over a long time period—writers are often not paid much up front—and people who know nothing about the business then chant about “obscenely long copyright terms.”

In other words, starry-eyed assumptions by people not in the business that there are boundless new opportunities are meaningless. Especially when they are trying as hard as they can to remove opportunities to get paid.

As for tools, I believe a lot of it is done with Adobe Flash. Jean knows much more about it than I do. (I’m really a maker of concrete artists books, not digital ones.) She’s a lovely, helpful person and deeply interested in digital storytelling (in part because of her belief that it can be very helpful to many children). So if you have questions, feel free to contact her. Once you enter her site (the click spot is just below the happy giant) you can easily find her contact information.

Jean is interesting as an artist trained in traditional paper based techniques who is embrassing and exploring the digital world. I think this sort of cross-fertilization between traditional and new technologies that one sees in the work of numerous people who mix images and words (particularly book artists, graphic novel writers & artists, and children’s book artists & illustrators) is very exciting.

This is a small part of what we think of when we talk about the publishing industry and, as Francis convincingly argues, these people’s efforts are not going to cause a restructuring of the whole industry. But I think that these artists — many of whom are using the new technologies to gain more control over their work — will have some effect.

One of the reasons I mentioned the Graphic Novel people earlier is that they are very big on having complete control over their work, and over how the words, images, and design are put together. That is why so many of them have chosen to self-publish. Now that the genre is growing fast and big houses want to get into graphic novel, I wonder what will happen. A number of children’s book publishers are trying to add graphic novels to their lists. However, picture books are put together and marketed in a very different way that graphic novels have been; and the power of editors, publishers, and booksellers has been much greater in the picture book world than in the world of graphic novels. I think it’ll be interesting to see what effect the culture clash has here.

the’ zoo’ is also stimulating; what sort of ‘tool kit’ is used to construct such a thing?

I sort of feel that the ebook in general might? have the feel of a sort of ‘musicality’ about its space. The ‘art of fugue’ Perhaps?

A bit more from

Narrow Road to the Deep North:

‘In this mortal frame of mine, which is made of 100 bones, 9 orifices, there is something, something that is called the ‘windswept spirit’ for lack of a better name , for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind. This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first but finally making it its life long business. It must be admitted, however, that there were times when it sank into such dejection that it was almost ready to drop it’s pursuit or again times when it was so puffed up with pride that it exulted in vain victories over the others. Indeed, ever since it has began to write poetry it has never found peace with itself, always wavering between doubts of one kind or another. At one time it wanted to gain security by entering the service of a court and in another it wished to measure the depths of its ignorance by trying to be a scholar but it was prevented from either because of its unquenchable love of poetry. The fact is, it knows no other art than the art of writing poetry and therefore it hangs on to it more or less blindly.’

I just remembered a wonderful site that is an online version of a terrific print ABC book for kids. It is a good example of what I’m talking about. The original paper book is an excellent one, while the animated on line one is excellent in a whole different way. Be sure to click on the letters to get the full effect. http://www.bemboszoo.com/

One of the author-illustrators in the Children’s Book Guild of DC has been doing interesting work with digital storytelling, too. You can see some of it at http://www.jeangralley.com/ Take a quick look at “My Tooth”; though it still has a “pageness” that the Bembo Zoo lacks, Jean is definitely creating something that is not simply digital imitation of a paper book. Nor is it an animated cartoon; it is an e book.

Enjoy!

morning mist, how nice

just for once

not to see Mount Fuji

When you’re singing a blues song, you always sing the first line twice.
Oh, when you’re singing a blues song, you always sing the first line twice.
And along about the second line, anything that rhymes will suffice.

Richard

I’ve been using the Internet to sell self-published niche books ever since there was an Internet.

Vanity/subsidy presses have always been around—and Lulu is a vanity press. The problem with vanity presses in general is that (a) most of the services they offer are not good, and their marketing regarding their services can be misleading, and (b) every reviewer recognizes who they all are, and almost no large review media will review any vanity press books. Self-publishers who need services are much better off just hiring their own editors, designers, marketers, etc. There are straightforward print-on-demand printers who do not provide, or claim to provide, any additional services and who do a good job with unillustrated books. (POD does not in general work well for illustrations at the current state of the technology.)

One important thing to remember about print-on-demand is that it is currently mostly a way to produce short runs rather than printing one book at a time. There is less capital outlay up front than for offset printing, but the POD unit/per-book printing cost is currently higher than that of offset printing for runs under about 500 (beyond which it’s better to use an offset printer). Meaning that POD books need to be priced higher for readers.

I’ve found that readers almost always want to buy from a centralized location such as Amazon—and Amazon and other online discount sites have put almost all of the niche booksellers I used to sell to out of business.

Other than that, I agree with you about e-books needing to become a new media for creating new kinds of works. One that incorporates sound, animation, and/or video with text, and/or collaboratorive storytelling with the reader. To do this, readers have to leave behind the notion of e-books just being searchable, cheap versions of print books.

I also agree that books, even unillustrated ones, need to be designed. What people have been talking about as a “subconscious sense” of a book is largely a result of careful choices in font, margins, and other graphic design elements.

One reason I was impatient with that blog is that anyone who’s ever designed a website knows that the problem of designing a “flowing” document is hardly new. For a website, readers can resize the window at will, they have monitors showing the colors differently, they have different bandwidths that affect how long they are willing to wait to see things before giving up and clicking off the site, the font choices are limited … and there often really is no way to solve the problem of making the website look great for everyone in every situation. You just have to assume some averages and do the best you can.

There are books with specific advice on how to design websites, and there will be books with specific advice on how to design e-books (if there aren’t already). I just prefer specifics to jargon.

Two last random comments: One of the most beautiful books I ever saw was an original copy of (part of) Diderot’s encylopedia. One of the cleverest back cover designs I ever saw was for a book on Art Deco, where the designer actually managed to make the bar code (usually a hideous blot on the cover), look great as a design element.