Comments on: By the book

By the book

meech — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:51:09 -0800

HarperCollins is the first major publisher to give away an entire version of a new book online, revenue being raised through Yahoo! ads. But they don't seem to be 100% committed - if you go to their website you can pay $18.26 for the e-book and no mention is made of it being available free at the author's own website. [Appropriately the book, "Go it Alone" by Bruce Judson is about entrepreneurial ideas]

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:55:25 -0800

I applaud their effort but putting each page on it's own web page is not very fun to read. They even split sentences between pages, like a real book. I guess they didn't typeset it again.

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:12:53 -0800

Ugh! Good thing Acrobat can convert this into a single .PDF file for me.

By: hal9k

hal9k — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 19:19:10 -0800

I'll wait for the movie. Actually it's currently in production as we speak and should hit theaters (and be released on DVD) by next week. Destined to be a Turner Classic by end of spring.

By: TrinityB5

TrinityB5 — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:24:30 -0800

The HarperCollins site features some true ebook formats (.lit, .pdb), while the author has the book online in HTML. And for the record, a PDF is not really an ebook format, no matter how Adobe tries to spin it; still, I suppose that it's more convenient than HTML, especially if you want to take it mobile. HC did leave out a big format, .prc for Mobipocket Reader.

By: bashos_frog

bashos_frog — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:33:12 -0800

I bought this damn book in a store, and I'm pissed off that they're now giving it away for free (mostly because it wasn't that great a book anyway). I'm gonna download a pdf of a HarperCollins book from a p2p site to even things out a bit.

By: jscalzi

jscalzi — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 05:50:57 -0800

"HarperCollins is the first major publisher to give away an entire version of a new book online" Well, except for T o r, and Ace. But I guess because they publish science fiction they don't count.