Over on Teleread, there’s a new blog post today about ebooks being fertile for annotation. I envision this somewhat like a post littered with Wikipedia links to explain things so that the reading audience who doesn’t know what he’s talking about can go get a little primer, and the part of the audience that does know won’t have its reading flow interrupted.
I could have (and still could at any point in the future) litter The Proviso with references and annotations embedded in the ebook editions, but my question is this:
If you had an ebook reader (or if you HAVE an ebook reader), how do you think you’d like such a thing?
On the ebook front, nothing much to report except the iLiad just released a new thingymajig that’s not getting rave reviews. And the Kindle’s not coming out in the UK this year.
On the publishing front, The Mysterious They say that if you’re a midlister or a new author–or an agent specializing in such–y’all are just SOL ’cause the PTBs at major houses are tightening their belts (which means either the smaller houses will be, too or they’ll step in to take up the slack and make a mark).
Yeah. I don’t have that problem.
Oh, one more thing. As a reader, I have a suggestion for you e-publishers: Put the blurb of the book on the first page. That way I haven’t forgotten what the book is about when I open up my ebook reader and see titles and author names. I’m terribly forgetful and have no wish to dive into a book I don’t know what it’s about. Yeah, I downloaded it so it must have intrigued me but now I don’t know why. With my print books, I always go to the blurb to figure out what I want to read next, but obviously, there is no back-of-book on an ebook.
And by the way, we did put The Proviso‘s blurb in the front for that very reason.
October 17th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
I don’t know that I have the time or money to even entertain the concept of an ebook reader, but I think I’d like the idea of having inside information to fluff out the details. I think if one went overboard, though, it would end up being like that extra disc you get with your DVDs–hours and hours of crap you hardly bother with because you really just want to get on with the story, not a 2-hour treatise on the wardrobe dept. and what the actors did on their day off.
So damn, woman–the book is up on Amazon, but no artwork?
I’m all atwitter to finish reading the monster so I can gush approriately in the reader reviews.
(Crap–how come this MB keeps changing my html so the link won’t open in a new tab?)
October 18th, 2008 at 8:45 am
When Amazon gets the physical book, they cut it apart and scan the cover and the first few pages or whatever for the “peek inside” feature. They won’t load the artwork until they get the book.
And…they haven’t gotten the book yet.
October 18th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Well obviously, I don’ know nuthin’ ’bout birthin’ no books–ah jus’ reads ‘em.
How many years since I got the first taste of this epic? You understand my impatience, surely.
October 18th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Uh…
Your problem is you don’t want to read on the computer.
October 19th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Only because I’m on the damned thing ALL the time already and my feet would blow up if I didn’t give them a break.
I’ve got a vacation coming up, though, and if I don’t get a copy in my hot little hands by then, damned skippy I’m going to read it on the computer! Worst part of that is that I can’t drag around a G5 to shove in people’s faces to demand they look at what my famous friend made!