On the whole, I agree with Phil and others: I prefer print (and preferably
an antiquarian original edition if I find a bargain). E has the
obsolescence problem. Its one conspicuous advantage, if properly done, is
added searchability (the indexes in a lot of 18th and 19th century books
tend to be vestigial or non existent in my experience). As regards
searchability, it has to be said that (love them or loathe them) google
books does a pretty good job. As Phil says, where e-books including google
(and an alarming number of reprint houses that shall remain nameless) fall
down is on folded maps, plans etc. Even where I work, we've not found a
satisfactory way of printing the really large folded items, but we do make
those available free via the book's page in our on-line catalogue, which
seems to be a reasonable compromise.
The reason why an antiquarian bookseller wouldn't just scan all their
stock and sell them as e-books themselves? The answer - having been doing
just that for five years - is that it is extraordinarily time-consuming
to do this properly. Amongst other things, you have to clean up the images
to get rid of the foxing and the defacements, not to mention images of
people's hands; hunt down any missing pages, avoid trashing the fragile
bindings in the process, electronically stitch together the separate scans
of parts of large fold-outs and so on. And if you wanted to do it on the
cheap, why bother - there are masses and masses of such offerings out
there already. You'd want to be certain that you really had a rare item
that was key to your niche readership and not available elsewhere before
putting in the effort.
So, Mike, I think you are pretty safe for now - the existing print
offerings whose authors lived till after 1942 (= copyright until 70 years
after author's death) can't legally be digitised and sold by J. Random
Public anyway, and the older stuff has either already been done for free
by google without affecting your sales too badly, or is so rare they won't
have found it.
Kate
From: Phil Newman <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: 08/07/2013 13:16
Subject: Re: Cwmorthin Book - possible reprint
Sent by: mining-history <[log in to unmask]>
Tanya,
Researchers are not the only users of books and books represent far more
than just a source of information. If the only use you have for a book is
as a source of data for your latest research project - use it and discard
it - then you are denying yourself one of the great pleasures of being a
researcher, not to mention detaching yourself from the humanity of the
process.
A well-researched, well-written, well-illustrated and thoughtfully
designed
book is a source of pleasure and once on your book shelf will go on giving
pleasure as well as providing a very usable source of information.
I have many OP books and journal articles stuffed into my hard disk. I've
forgotten what most of them are about because they have no physical
presence
(unlike those on my bookshelf) and when I do access them the inability to
browse them at more than one page at a time is infuriating. Large fold-out
drawings are seldom included in ebooks yet are a key part of many 19th
century works and engravings are often ruined as part of the scanning
process. I agree they have their place and I'll use them if I have to,
but
whenever I can I'll try to get a printed version.
So, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater! Reprints do have a
future, at least until all the old farts like me have died out.
Phil Newman
-----Original Message-----
From: mining-history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Tanya
Sent: 08 July 2013 10:51
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Cwmorthin Book - possible reprint
Why go old-school? Why not an e-book?
Ebooks never go out of print and they cost nothing to reproduce. They can
also be automatically updated/corrected. They go on making money or the
publisher/author years after the tree-masher print run is exhausted.
As someone who has spent a lot of time searching for OP books to research
projects I wish to urge all publishers to move to e-publishing, for their
current output and their back catalogue.
Tanya
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mining-history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Mike Moore
> Sent: 08 July 2013 09:19
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Cwmorthin Book - possible reprint
>
> I'm in the process of trying to get a reprint of this book - its been
> out of print for sometime unfortunately the original plates have gone
> missing, I'm trying to get a feel for number of copies to get printed
> is anyone on here interested?
>
> Mike
>
> If you need to leave the list, send the following message to
> [log in to unmask] -
>
> leave mining-history
> ---------
If you need to leave the list, send the following message to
[log in to unmask] -
leave mining-history
---------
If you need to leave the list, send the following message to
[log in to unmask] -
leave mining-history
---------
If you need to leave the list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] -
leave mining-history
---------
|