eBooks

Chris, Judy, etc,

I have to say that reading a traditional printed book has its own unique
satisfaction, but I would also like to have PDF copies of some of the
material I read. Post Factory and Chris's Experimental Photography Workbook
being two of them. Having a PDF file for reference on computer has great
appeal for many but from the perspective of reducing the publishing cost it
would be a great incentive to create PDFs. Seems to me there would be a
greater chance of people accessing the book over the internet, or at least
being able to read excerpts to entice readers to purchase a copy on disk.

Mark Nelson's PDN e-Book comes to mind as an example of this form of
publishing. I love being able to open the PDF and read through it when I
need to.

I'm also a subscriber to Lens Work Extended, a CD based magazine that is
distributed in PDF format. As a result I get to view and read much more
material than would ever be possible in the printed version.

So I think the trend in publishing e-Books as a PDF has been well
established. People are willing to pay for them because they can be sold and
distributed at a reasonable price. And the potential for reaching many more
readers should be an incentive to publish electronically.
 
Also I've mentioned this idea to few people in private e-mail but I think
the creation and sale of Quick Time movies on the internet would be a great
way to demonstrate alternative processes. Dan Burkholder's mini-tutorials
are a perfect example of this concept.
 
Finally, perhaps Sandy will consider converting his carbon manual to PDF
someday!

Don Bryant
Received on Tue Sep 20 09:01:39 2005