"E-reading isn't reading"

[Shadow_Ferret]

Originally Posted by kuwisdelu

I actually meant easier to search your own collection.

Depending what you collect, finding a good digital copy can still be difficult...

I wonder. I know nothing of the digital format, but it seems to me it would be easier to find a digital copy of something then it would be to find a pristine copy of Action Comics #1. There were only so many of those printed and even less that have survived the years.

With a digital copy can't you just copy it endlessly?

[kuwisdelu]

Originally Posted by Shadow_Ferret

I wonder. I know nothing of the digital format, but it seems to me it would be easier to find a digital copy of something then it would be to find a pristine copy of Action Comics #1. There were only so many of those printed and even less that have survived the years.

With a digital copy can't you just copy it endlessly?

Well, the medium with which I have experience is anime.

Sometimes you have to follow lots of dead links and try lots of torrents with no seeders before you find one that works. Sometimes, you'll have old, forgotten torrents that, frustratingly, have enough leechers that something like 99% of the file exists, but that last 1% is missing, so you're screwed. And even if you locate a copy, if the anime is old (> 7 years ago or so), the resolution might be crap. It might be a shitty 240p DivX encoded .avi with burnt-in subtitles and lots of translation errors.

For example, my favorite series Neon Genesis Evangelion doesn't really exist in a good digital form. There are some older rips, but they're mostly shitty quality encoding from poor source. The latest Platinum Collection release I have on DVD is pretty nice, and has the director's cut of the later episodes, which lots of the digital batches don't have. It's just no one's bothered to rip and encode the newer versions and re-time the subtitles.

Of course, this is relying on fansub groups to unofficially do this stuff, since there's no real official source for good digital copies (the ones that exist often do things like leave out the original audio and the subtitles for them), and pirates don't have time to sub 24/7 when they're in med school.

But then, there's also stuff like Macross Frontier which we can only get in digital form unless you want to spend the pretty penny to import it from Japan yourself, because it'll never get licensed.

[Shadow_Ferret]

I had to google "torrents" and now my head hurts.

I just assumed you'd look on ebay.

[kuwisdelu]

Originally Posted by Shadow_Ferret

I had to google "torrents" and now my head hurts.

The line "shitty 240p DivX encoded .avi with burnt-in subtitles" didn't hurt your head enough?

...becoming anime fan is how I learned more about video codecs than I ever wanted to know.

I just assumed you'd look on ebay.

I didn't know ebay was in the digital content business.

[bearilou]

Originally Posted by kuwisdelu

But then, there's also stuff like Macross Frontier which we can only get in digital form unless you want to spend the pretty penny to import it from Japan yourself, because it'll never get licensed.

I feel you, kuwi. For the longest time, I mourned that I couldn't get my hands on a complete set of episodes of Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It was piecemeal to get the episodes I had until someone finally put the full out on bittorrent. Even then, it took forever to download.

/anime derail

[Shadow_Ferret]

Originally Posted by kuwisdelu

I didn't know ebay was in the digital content business.

That's where I used to find a lot of my old time radio shows. MP3 format is digital content, isn't it?

[kuwisdelu]

Originally Posted by Shadow_Ferret

That's where I used to find a lot of my old time radio shows. MP3 format is digital content, isn't it?

Ah, didn't know that. Interesting.

Probably not reliable for my purposes.

[Medievalist]

Originally Posted by Shadow_Ferret

In EVERY way? because you'd have to convince how they are superior in collecting.

I don't think I'd use superior, but comics are true ephemera; they're self-consuming artifacts, and require delicate handling, like sheet music, for instance, or broadside ballads.

I'm glad people collect them, but I'm also glad that some archives are carefully digitizing comics (and broadsheet ballads and sheet music) so people can still enjoy them without damaging them.

This is part of the reason scholars favor digital facsimiles. No, the digital Luttrell Psalter (or Book of Kells) isn't "the same" at all as the actual manuscripts.

But they do serve well for most scholars, and they help preserve the original.

[Rhoda Nightingale]

^Ah-ah--I'm still thinking 'graphic novels' over here. Single issue comics do require delicate handling.

For my two cents though, I could never read comics on a digital screen. Manga? Okay, I can see that. Kinda. But nah, I still prefer the physical format. I agree with kuwi on the "more easily searchable" thing, but most e-reader platforms are just too damn small. And if you make them bigger, they get bulky and cumbersome. So yeah--all print, all the time for comics.

Book-books, I still prefer print, but I don't mind reading them in the digital format.

/two cents

[RedWombat]

Honestly, if I were starting my webcomic over again today (and my boyfriend has strict orders to bury me in the backyard if I start thinking that's a good idea) I'd format it for e-reader.

But if I had started it five years ago, I'd have formatted it for horizontal monitor displays.

[muravyets]

Originally Posted by Medievalist

I am saying that the real book is the data, the text, but in some cases, other kinds of information are also in the container. It may be a book that is primarily or exclusively images.

I'm saying that we may prefer one container over another. And that one person may prefer one container for one purpose over another container.

The book is Austen's Emma. It may be Austen's text in an 18 century octavio with buckram binding, a 21st century limited edition archive quality hard cover, or an inexpensive paperback, a book club edition, or an ebook in any one of several file formats.

To me, the text is more important than the container.

I am even more interested in the provenance of the text than I am the container. A poorly produced ebook or cheap paperback that uses Austen's text is more valued by me than a beautifully bound hardcover that's an abridged version of Austen's text.

I'll take the Riverside Shakespeare with dog-eared pages, or the Arden digital Shakespeare's Works over The Globe Illustrated Shakespeaer which is a piece of poorly made crap as a book, and as an edition of Shakespeare, doesn't have much to do with what Shakespeare wrote. But if you read reviews, you'll see people talk about what a handsome book The Illustrated Globe Shakespeare is, and how pretty the "leatherette" binding is and how nice it looks on their coffee table.

But you'll have to look a bit to find readers noting that The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare was edited by poltroons, that Cordelia lives at the end of King Lear, or that the text is barely readable because it's set so poorly.

I love books as containers, but the text (or sometimes the image) is more important to me than the container, almost all the time. The public domain Emily Dickinson is Emily Dickinson edited, not the poems as Emily wrote them. Punctuation, meter, and even lines were changed by her editor at will.

Coleridge's edition of Shakespeare is not what Shakespeare wrote, and what Coleridge did to Donne is a shanda.

Okay, yeah, I see what you are saying. I disagree for the reasons stated earlier in the thread.

[muravyets]

Originally Posted by Medievalist

I think that we may well see this happen in our lifetime, at least with works in the canon, or OP mass market fiction.

It used to be that you'd buy the pages from the printer, then take them to your favorite binder, or have the printer act as a go-between, and have the binding that suited your personal taste and budget.

I think that may very well become a service offered by bookstores, on or offline.

Yes, exactly my thought. Everything old is new again, eh? For me personally, and the way I use books and the way I relate to digital media, it would be the ideal outcome.

[muravyets]

Originally Posted by Torgo

For me, comics on an iPad are - apart from the fact that you can't really see whole spreads at a time - superior to comics in print in every way I can think of.

Well, clearly you can think of one way in which they are not superior. To me, that one way -- not being able to see whole spreads at a time -- would be a deal-breaker.

[Medievalist]

Originally Posted by muravyets

Yes, exactly my thought. Everything old is new again, eh? For me personally, and the way I use books and the way I relate to digital media, it would be the ideal outcome.

The other thing that I'm really hoping we'll see (and I should confess I've been hoping for this since c. 1992-ish) is that the kinds of books that are by nature not permanent—not so much fiction, but things like academic monographs that have limited print runs and cost too damn much—will be digital first/primarily (you can buy print if you want but it maybe costs more).

Things like dissertations, for instance. Before I stopped it, my dissertation was for sale for a print version that consisted of 8.5 x 11 paper in a shrink-wrapped stack for $80.00.

Mostly, it's grad students who buy dissertations. They likely will end up having to buy 2 or three in order to write their own, because you do have to see what other recent scholars have done, and make sure you're not duplicating their research.

But $80.00 is way too much.

Ebook monographs and dissertations (especially for free, like mine) are perfect for this kind of non-permanent book.

The other thing I hope for is that books that are both art and data (container and text) will be better made, true examples of book arts.

I have the Psalms volume of the printed facsimile of the St. John's Bible. I'd love to see more publishers creating books of this quality.

I'd love to see more well-done printed books, not just art books, but things like long lasting durable editions with case sewn bindings, archival glues and papers, and fine typesetting.

[Torgo]

Originally Posted by muravyets

Well, clearly you can think of one way in which they are not superior. To me, that one way -- not being able to see whole spreads at a time -- would be a deal-breaker.

Well, that's why I qualified it that way. It hasn't bothered me unduly, and if I feel I'm missing something I can switch to double-page mode and just peer or zoom.

[RobertEvert]

Originally Posted by CaroGirl

The best books make you forget where you are. They make you hear, taste and smell the story, not whatever might be going on in the world in which you sit. When I first starting using my e-reader, I would catch myself trying to turn the page rather than push the button.

A great story is a great story. How it's delivered to you becomes irrelevant.

And pretentious excerpt is very pretentious indeed.

Brilliantly said, CaroGirl.