Computer monitors still register colors differently. And screen resolution
makes a big difference in how a work is seen.
Because of this, I began framing my work into a specific amount of pixels,
at least horizontally. While I check colors on at least two monitors, and
try to get something reasonable.
Of course artists have always had similar problems over control of their
work. Oil paint fades and darkens; marble weathers and chips; Taliban-minded
people are lurking everywhere, ready to blow up what offends their reality.
Even with books, as George Butterick has brilliantly shown, publishers set
typos that are perpetuated in later editions; thus texts may change from the
writer's original words.
The world is in flux, and so are works of art.
-Joel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Edward Picot" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 10:01 AM
Subject: Re: [WDL] Fwd: The Unbound Book
Margaret -
Has your venture into e-book self-publishing been via Smashwords, by any
chance? The stuff about hyperlinked index and formatting sounds familiar.
I like your positive attitude towards e-books, and I agree with you: I think
they probably are the future. On the other hand, of course, there are all
these stupid compatibility issues. Epub is the best format, but Kindle
doesn't like it. Colour is one of the big advantages of e-publishing, but
Kindle doesn't do colour. Page layout is really tricky because there are so
many different-sized readers. Even things like hyperlinks and rollovers... a
lot of e-readers (like the crappy one I got from Waterstones, purely because
someone gave me a load of Waterstones tokens) don't have touch-screen, which
means you can't click a link or activate a rollover.
I think a lot of these compatibility issues will probably disappear within
the next couple of years: I don't think non-touch-screen e-readers are going
to be around much longer, for example; and I'm sure Kindle will want to add
colour as soon as they can do it at a reasonable price and without
compromising their much-vaunted text quality. We may then find ourselves in
a very interesting place, because with zero storage and distribution costs
minority-interest publishing will be a really good opportunity for anybody
who fancies giving it a go.
- Edward
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