Tired of Dead Trees
I admit paper is the ultimate surface for reading text. But my collection of tech magazines is using up too much physical space. Wired, Linux Journal, Dr Dobbs, MIT Review, Business 2.0. Stacks and stacks of magazines clutter my shelves. I feel like a pack rat, so instead I just now put them in a recycle bin at the curb. But I feel bad, because what if I needed an old article for reference?
Weren’t these magazines in some electronic format in order to typeset and print them? Of course! Why didn’t my subscription earn me access to an electronic version? Imagine 5 years of a publication on CD or DVD. It could be indexed and searchable. And it would fit nicely on my basement file server. Linux Journal actually is available on CD-ROM, probably because they use SGML, XML, or TeX for their typesetting. Except, I have to pay another $30 for the CD after I’ve been a loyal subscriber? At least it’s available! Wired Magazine hits newstands and then main articles appear online shortly after. Why did I bother to subscribe? Well, it was only $5, and the paper magazine is pretty. But why can’t I get a year of the mag on a CD? As for the other mags, they suck.
Forgetting magazines for the moment, why aren’t more books in eBook or some online format? Amazon has a growing eBook section. But selection is paltry, especially tech books. O’Reilly does a much better job with their Safari Books Online. Unfortunately, the basic monthly subscription price of $14.99 needs to come down about $5.
Why are tech books so expensive anyway? If I want to buy a new fiction book like The Da Vinci Code, it costs me $15, but a book on Programming Java costs me $85. Come on! Do programmers make too much money, or are most tech books bought by corporations for training?
And then I compare the paperback version of tech books to the eBook version, and the price is the same or $5 cheaper. What?! We’re not procuring matierals and manufacturing bits here — it costs nothing to make a copy of bits and very little to pay for shared bandwidth. The publishing industry needs to get the cost low enough for the convenience of buying the PDF instead of finding it on BitTorrent for free. Before this medium becomes more popular, they better look at what happened with the music industry.
I think eBooks are about to become more popular as CRTs are displaced by LCDs. An even bigger innovation, called e-ink, is about to create buzz and provide an environment for eBooks to really take off. Sony’s e-Book reader LIBRIé is the first display using electronic paper ink. Now, if they don’t screw consumers too much with the DRM and the cost of eBook files, we can all be happy.
May 3rd, 2004 at 9:11 pm
You know, I find myself actually reducing the number of magazines that I get on a monthly basis. I find that I just don’t have the time to read them all.
Would I read them if I could carry them around with me via e-ink/e-book/e-mag? Hmmm … what I think would work better is to have AUDIO versions of the magazines. For the most part, most of the articles are all text and very few images. But it would be easier to carry around a few images and look at those but be able to listen to your magazines, etc. while you’re driving to and from work, out walking the dog/kid(s), mowing the ENDLESS, NEVERENDING FIELD OF DEMON GRASS (Ahem … sorry, I’m a new home owner and haven’t had to take care of a yard since High School. What a waste of time!
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Now, you CAN get a lot of “audio” material at audible.com, such as newspapers and NLR (National Liberal Radio, otherwise known as NPR).
What I want is someone (excitedly!) talking to me about programming and software development when and where I please.