There are a couple of times, at least for me, where e-books simply cannot compete with paper. This was underlined to me when I recently ordered the Terry Pratchett book shown to the left. The Discworld Graphic Novels is a reprint of two of his first books which were issued in graphic novel form. I was unaware that any of the Pratchett books had been done graphically.
I love Terry Pratchett. I have every one of his books. I have every one of his books on a bookshelf in my bedroom. I look at them and I think about the stories. Somehow it is nice just to see my collection of his works and know that I have it all. There is no way an e-book can give you this feeling. I guess you could hang the SD or CF card that contains the books on the wall—but it won’t be the same thing. I have complete collections of Peanuts, Pogo, Calvin and Hobbs, Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine and the works of Winston Churchill, among others. No way would I ever want to have these collections solely in ebook form.
The second area where e-books don’t cut it, at least at the present state of the art, is for graphic novels, such as the Pratchett book mentioned above or the wonderful set of Girl Genius books by Phil and Kaja Foglio. Color is essential to enjoy these and six shades of gray just won’t cut it.
Any other areas where e-books don’t work?
Anything that is not text doesn’t work well with an ebook. If it is a business books with graphics and charts, if it is a graphic novel, if it is a kids picture book, if it is an art book, it doesn’t work.
Yes, I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to how graphic novels would make it into e-form. Both Marvel and DC offer comics on the Net. Both UIs are awful. So far the UI I’ve liked is the one for Warren Ellis’s FreakAngels (a free free free webcomic, btw):
http://www.freakangels.com/?p=23
But see how it seems to be as large as a standard comics books page?
One thing to remember is that comic books started out as the bastard child of newspaper strips. The current page size was due to the size of the presses used waaaay back then. I’m sure you’re familiar with Japanese Manga too and know they are considerably smaller (and mostly black and white!).
I’ve already asked someone with an iPhone to test FreakAngels. Tap-to-zoom doesn’t work on each panel. A disappointment. But if that could be worked out, perhaps the iPhone will change comics as it has slowly been changing the Net. See Michael Connick’s blog for all the places that now have iPhone-tailored sites:
http://mconnick.wordpress.com/
Some of us in the electronic records community have been talking about the materiality of electronic records and some of the behavioral aspects of using one versus the other. Without going into that in more detail here, Paul Biba’s “When e-books don’t cut it” caught my attention because of some of the like reactions expressed concerning e-books. There seems to be something going on when people pick up a real rather than virtual product, as I have witnessed at the National Archives holding an original WWII ship’s Deck Log with watch summaries signed by my long deceased oldest brother and holding and leafing through one of my wife’s collection of “pop-up” books. The art and craftsmanship involved in these tomes, each individually hand-made, is extraordinary. Like other commentators, graphics can have much to do with it, though I’m not certain that it is all simply a question of currently inadequate technology. What makes excellent computer graphics in movies and potentially in e-books is that they are so easy to believe that one can forget that they are grapics or machines. In something like pop-up books, we know they are not real but they draw out our imagination to transport us to their imaginary world, while at the same time making us awe-struck with their magnificent production.
Assuming that e will never be able to equal p in anything is a sucker’s bet. So far, e does best when we’re talking about text. That doesn’t mean this is the only choice.
Years ago, I remember a discussion with one of my researchers who wanted a color monitor for his PC. Since we only printed in black and white, I told him it was completely frivolous and a waste of money. Green and black was how computer monitors are supposed to look.
I like to think I learn from my mistakes.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
“Anything that is not text doesn’t work well with an ebook. If it is a business books with graphics and charts, if it is a graphic novel, if it is a kids picture book, if it is an art book, it doesn’t work.”
Couldn’t disagree more. I gave up buying comic books and graphic novels years ago because the e-book equivalent is much better, especially on monitors 22″ or greater.
“Yes, I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to how graphic novels would make it into e-form. Both Marvel and DC offer comics on the Net. Both UIs are awful. So far the UI I’ve liked is the one for Warren Ellis’s FreakAngels (a free free free webcomic, btw):”
The UIs on all non-pirated comics pretty much sucks. Fans and pirates have fixed the problem with the .cbz and .cbr formats and readers like CDisplay (http://www.geocities.com/davidayton/CDisplay). If Marvel and DC had half a clue, they’d be releasing comic books in that format 6 months after publication. As it is, pretty much every comic book ever published is available in cbr/cbz format if you know where to look.
In fact, what Marvel/DC need to do long term is find a way to sell e-comics very cheaply in a way that doesn’t kill the remaining independent comic book stores. When you look at Marvel for 2007, for example, they had $545 million in total revenue. Only $125 million of that came from publishing, and the operating profit there was only $53.5 million.
Longer term, their bread and butter is movies and licensing, but part of the problem is that everyone wants to see Hulk/Iron Man/Spider-Man in part because all of us as kids read those comics…but now, comic readership among kids is very low — a) comics today are really PG-13, b) comics are relatively expensive at $4 or so an issue (hmm…do I buy 4 comics this month or subscribe to WoW…) c) kids have many more entertainment options and surveys show they much prefer videogames to boring old comics.
I like comic books, and there are some clear advantages to having them on a computer. For starters, they’re a lot easier to store, and you don’t have to worry about condition and all that collector/quality nonsense. I like particularly what Brian said about .cbz and .cbr being better than what Marvel and DC currently offer. If more comics were available like this, I’d buy up every issue truckloads of them.