Today, I am going to talk about the cost of printing vs. Ebook distribution.  Obviously, if a book was distributed by printing, a lot of different costs go into it, such as cost for paper, labor, bindings, print, and shipping.  Alternatively, Ebook distribution costs are dramatically lower.  There is no shipping cost, there is not printing cost, or paper cost; the only cost would be the cost paid to the developer for making the ebook and the company that distributes the ebook.  Is this a good thing?  Many jobs will be lost and only someone with a specific skill set in computer development can help make an ebook.  There also is an unlimited supply of ebooks, unlike paper books.  This makes the possibilities of distribution endless for ebooks as long as there is internet, but there is a limit for paper book distribution.  I think that publishers may move to ebooks because it can make them a lot more money.  I don’t think this is a good thing because many people can lose their jobs.

Currently, ebook distribution is somewhat impractical because the majority of people do not have e-readers and there are political and logistical problems (that you can read about in THIS article) that have arisen.

What do you think?

In this article  Jane Goodall addresses the plagiarism incident regarding her book, Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants. Interestingly, the book is co-authored with Gail Hudson, meaning Goodall is not solely at fault. The article continues on to state how, with the internet as it is today, it is fairly easy to plagiarize from others, sometimes even without knowing.

I am on the Budget Committee for Student Government. Last night a representative from Marquis Players came in requesting additional money for the show, Curtains. The copyright cost more than expected. (Here is a link to the Oxford Companion to the American Musical about Curtains for a description of the production.) The committee was very confused why the organization hadn’t correctly budgeted for the copyright costs. The brown bag discussion with the theatre professor proved very useful as I helped explain the complex copyright licensing process. It was interesting to see how copyright laws we learn about in class affect students at Lafayette.

I found this blog to be very interesting because of the points it presented on whether e-books are a good deal for consumers. Unlike traditional books, E-books present an initial fixed cost–the tablet itself. Then books can be loaded onto the tablet at a smaller cost (sometimes) than printed books. The article also touches on how books don’t get damaged once they are purchased. They cannot be misplaced either unless the tablet is lost. Is this the relationship that consumers have with books though?

Some people buy books, read them once, and never touch them again. Others like to swap books with friends. In this case, as the article notes, e-books might actually present more costs to consumers than traditional books.

Today while thinking about the prompt, I remembered the time I stood in line at midnight to get the final Harry Potter book. Although this seems silly and a bit useless, I realized the whole aspect of a book release disappears with the introduction of electronic readers. Why would you wait in line, when you can click a button and up load it in a second?

While reading an article called “Is it a Book or an App,” I came across an interesting quote. The author wrote that “middle age women can read soft porn in public without anyone knowing about it”. I found this slightly funny and very interesting. When I see people reading, I often look at the book they are reading and sometimes even look it up if it looks interesting. However with electronic books, no one will ever see what a person is reading in the open. I think e-books adds a privacy to reading that maybe was not there before. Know anyone can openly read whatever they want! I think that is great maybe a guy wants to read twilight while relaxing at the beach now he can with no problems!

With the invention of the internet, it seems that newspapers and magazines have gotten hit the hardest. Before the internet, newspapers, radios and televisions were the only way to get news, and even then, newspapers would be the best way to get the most thorough review of the news possible. With the internet, anyone can go to yahoo.com and see headlines of the day for free. With the invention of e-books, newspapers have gotten even more sidelined; while their content may be available for subscription on an e-book, the printing press and anyone who was involved in handling the newspaper gets cut out of the distribution, which impacts the economy by cutting jobs. Thus, e-books (and by extension, the Internet) have an effect on the economy far beyond its intended scope.

In middle school, I loved checking out the oldest books in the library and reading them – not necessarily for their content, but I was strangely fascinated by how the pages sounded like when you turned them, and the musty smell of old books that seemed to shroud the books with mystery. Nowadays, old books are becoming harder and harder to find, and e-books are dominating the book frontier. With an e-book, you can store thousands of books on a single device, surf the web, and check email (on the increasingly popular sophisticated types of e-books). However, with that technology takes away much of the reading experience, from flipping the pages to smelling the pages of the book. While the e-book may be more practical, for me, there will be nothing that can replace the ethereal experience of reading a book.

I recently read an article about how many schools and students have chosen to use electronic readers instead of hard copies of books for summer reading. When of the main points the article discusses is how much easier it is for people to travel with electronic readers. This whole article made me think about how convenience has seemed to come above everything else for us. I cannot help but ask myself is convenience causing us to lose different things. When I read my summer reading books, I was able to flip through the pages and just sit and read on my own. However, now some electronic reads have games in them or even programs that read the book to you. It just does not seem like the same summer reading anymore.

While the original e-book was simply a book that could connect to the internet solely for the purpose of purchasing other books, nowadays e-books are simply small tablets with special screens so that your eyes don’t get as tired reading off of e-books as they would off computers or tablets. Essentially, e-books and tablets have all of the same capabilities, with internet, email, music, etc. E-books may even be more practical since their memory is probably larger than the average tablet’s memory. While that may seem “fun” and “cool” to have a book that can do everything, it definitely changes the experience of reading, from being able to turn the pages to being more focused on your book because you don’t have any other distractors.