This story appeared on Artsjournal.com today...and I felt a shudder down my spine. Imagine if early printers had release incompatible versions of their books for various platforms. "Gutenberg plans to introduce a separate version of the Holy Bible for three platforms, beginning with the scroll-reader in the next couple of weeks. Versions for accordion and codex bindings will follow..."
Are we witnessing the latest iteration of the VHS-Beta wars? Must these new technologies always involve the production of huge quantities of incompatible merchandise, destined for obsolescence? The market capitalist in me is whispering that competition like this makes better products, but it's easy to shout that little voice down when you think of how the big fish (Apple?) can calculate how to weather the storm and how enormous the sheer cost of conversion will be for losers.
As a guerrilla reader, I hope the NYT Book Review will continue to be available on paper...though the article doesn't say anywhere that they plan to offer it that way...
2 comments:
There's a market capitalist in you? Better schedule surgery quick.
We make three separate e-versions of our books. But there are quite a few print versions too--cloth, paper, flexibound, large print(?). The e-format wars will shake out in the end, eventually, and we'll probably forget they ever happened. Remember 8-tracks?
As a matter of fact, I do remember 8 tracks...thanks for your comment, Jenya! ~g
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