From: Jacques Du Pasquier (jacques@dtext.com)
Date: Wed Apr 03 2002 - 08:19:45 MST
jeff davis wrote (2.4.2002/20:13) :
> Extropes,
>
> --- spike66 <spike66@ATTBI.com> wrote:
> > ...I predict
> > that the lack of hyperlinking capability on paper
> > text will cause that medium to become practically
> > obsolete. Watch the book industry implode by 2012.
>
> > I dont know how professional authors will copy
> > protect their work. Lee Daniel, would you go into
> > that as a means of making a living? Now?
>
> I can't claim to have any sense of certainty about
> this issue, but my ruminations follow this general
> path.
>
> [long proposition snipped]
Hi,
I think you fail to assess correctly the actual benefits of the
present system -- which is a bad starting point to propose an
alternative system.
The chain-letter model won't appeal to the readers. Simple readers
don't want to be sollicited all the time with manuscripts written by
unkown folks. They are not publisher, just casual readers. Try to pay
people to make such suggestions, and what you're trying to achieve is
have friends to spam each other (good luck with that model).
It is true that bringing a book to the market in the normal way is
very costy, and that this cost has to be payed in the end by the
reader. But the reader, who only reads so much, is assured by this
very investment made by the publisher that the texts have been
carefuly selected to please him. So is the critic, who has a
preselection made by the very obstacles to publishing, and so is the
book shop.
The reader is not primarily looking for something that would lower the
price of the book, because the main cost for him is the TIME
INVESTMENT and the READING EFFORT, not the book price. He is primarily
looking for a good filter allowing him to identify the very best
books.
This is not to say that the present system is very good, or even OK.
It's bad, and the Internet can make it better. But it has to match the
benefits of the present system. In particular, you need to have "third
parties" who replace the material obstacles of publishing as a filter,
so that the reader is not presented with the totality of writings. (Of
which most is very bad.)
Jacques
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