On eBooks, audiences, pirates and kangaroos

I think it’s now timely to discuss eBooks. I can definitely see the value in digitising books and making them available online – for availability and access, production costs and time amongst other reasons. They’re certainly rising in popularity too, with Amazon saying its Kindle eBook sales are now greater than traditional books. The Australian website ebookish is a great source of information about local developments in this area.

Project Gutenberg is a wonderful free site dedicated to providing a huge digital library / archive of eBooks, of works in the public domain. I think it’s a very worthy cause, and it’s amazing and encouraging that there’s so much support for it – 36ooo documents so far. Project Gutenberg have a mobile version, and the texts are available in variety of formats. Here’s what the converted classic looks like: HTML Treasure Island.

So what do I mean by Augmented eBook? I guess I want to have more than the book itself, with links to other information readily available and ingrained in the site. Tagging could achieve a sense of nonlinearity if people would like to read it according to themes (like in Stephen Fry’s myFry App, see earlier post). I’d like the users to be able to navigate the additional material separately too. Also, essentially, It’d be nice to be able to bring some of the pre-loved, treasured feelings you can get about books, and bring that to an digital book. So its other resource material will make it more than a printed book, and its aura and user interactions will make it more than an eBook. Does that make sense?

Rightio, Treasure Island: I need to nut out who the book is for, and who my website would be for. In the preface to the novel, Robert Louis Stevenson writes:

               TO THE HESITATING PURCHASER

               If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
                  Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
               If schooners, islands, and maroons,
                  And buccaneers, and buried gold,
               And all the old romance, retold
                  Exactly in the ancient way,
               Can please, as me they pleased of old,
                  The wiser youngsters of today:

               —So be it, and fall on!  If not,
                  If studious youth no longer crave,
               His ancient appetites forgot,
                  Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
               Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
                  So be it, also!  And may I
               And all my pirates share the grave
                  Where these and their creations lie!

I guess my website would be creating a means for “the wiser youngsters of today” to access the book- it’s not so much the themes that are increasingly irrelevant, it’s their outdated format. The pirates and buried treasure will continue to entertain young minds, and the literary value of the book alone is worth sharing. But something I still have to figure out for my doco are the era and context disparities… with the story set in the 18th Century Europe and mysterious places, written in England in 1881 and Bernie McClintock read his copy in Australia in 1936. Hmmmmm. Is it getting too convoluted?

Unless….. I go with ‘Dot and the Kangaroo’? It was written in 1899 and published/read by Great Aunty Dot in the 1910s, so a bit more contained. Should I change to this book?
Pros- it’s contained in the one era. It’s Australian. It serves a cause (wildlife conservation). It’s intended audience is potentially clearer- children and people interested in that specific time in history. Whereas Treasure Island has heaps of versions and is possibly relevant to younger generations via other media, Dot and the Kangaroo is more due for a revival.
Cons-  I can’t remember anything of the story- but it’s shorter than T-Island and I can skim and refresh? Plus, I already know a lot more about Australiana than pirates. It doesn’t have the reader’s illustrations – but I can make them myself? And/or the original book comes with its own beautiful illustrations….

Things seems to be swaying in Dot’s favour. Luckily a lot of my research and conceptualisation applies to this new old book. Here’s Project Gutenberg’s version: HTML Dot and the Kangaroo. Oh hey, also, whereas Pedley dedicates her book to ‘the children of Australia’ for a specific and ongoing cause, Stevenson seems a bit more laissez-faire about whether his book stands the test of time, with his “so be it”s and being apparently willing to submit to the grave. I reckon if I were to ask the authors, they’d tell me to go with Dot. So be it!

The myFry App gets where it’s at

In class last week we were discussing new online forms of publishing and e-magazines. I have a mixed impression of these – some are really great and interactive, and others are clearly “we have this publication, let’s make it digitalised and add in a swipey page function”. In my opinion, that’s pretty lazy. The best online publications and interactive magazines offer users experiences which are unattainable in traditional formats. The same with documentaries in general- they can be great as feature films, but might not necessarily translate well to be great online docos if they’re simply broken up into smaller videos and posted together on a site. Something that I think really helps in this web conversion is nonlinearity. It requires engagement and allows people to delve into the doco as much as they want (and we all know about Internet users and their notorious attention spans).

Sorry if you’ve heard me wax lyrical about Stephen Fry before, but this is relevant dammit! His autobiography ‘The Fry Chronicles’ has been effectively rendered to the App format and is a truly digital book.

You can still navigate chapter by chapter, but each section is tagged according to themes of his life, like comedy, acting, love, Hugh Laurie, and so on, which you can pick out and read in the order of your choice, which is pretty cool. Although I actually preferred to read the printed book (I don’t have an iPhone or iPad afterall), I’d like to think I would have appreciated the myFry innovation if I was that way inclined.