A Folio Society for ebooks?

Is there something like the Folio Society for ebooks? Is such an idea possible?

If I had an e-reader, what would make me pay a premium price for a digital book? Maybe footnotes that were links, or great illustrations, or annotations. Virtual leather doesn't seem too appealing.

I'm not seeing it either. Which leaves us with the possibility that in the future only material books (new ones at least) will be expensive to super-expensive special editions. Sad and scary.

No, same here. Ebooks are great, but even if the visual design of them matters, ultimately they are about reading, not about the artifacts themselves.

#4

I don't think it's ever (or extremely rarely) entirely about books-as-artifacts. Consider a food analogy: you can eat a carrot in various guises, raw, boiled, sliced, shredded, puréed, perhaps even packed into a "essence-of-carrot" pill. But, while in all cases you have "eaten a carrot", the experiences weren't identical, neither sensually nor in metabolic consequences. They are also not identical from one person to another.

The idea is possible, the success of implementing it, much less so. I will not pay premium prices for ebooks, especially where digital rights management is included. That's one "freebie" I can do without. I am finding many others who believe as I do in that respect.

I don't believe even high-quality illustrations would make me want to spend $$$$$$$$ on e-books. Electronic illustrations just aren't that superior.

I think we'll see "special editions" of books, much as we now have for DVDs. That is, most people will buy the regular edition, but there will also be edition that has extras--interview with author, outtakes (ie., drafts), critical essays by someone, raw statistics and original sources (for non-fiiction), etc.

I think we may also see "promised quality" editions. For example, right now I'd be very wary of reading many "free" editions of the classics. I'd be happy to spend a few bucks if I knew the text were solid--as good as any printed edition. How much do you want to bet, for instance, that most Kindle editions of George Eliot's works--only one of which can be printed without Greek letters—get that part wrong. Even if they get them right I gather there's a systematic problem with the font tables on the Kindle two that reverses the breathings when they coincide with an accent. I wouldn't but a printed edition that was full of such errors, so I'm not sure why I should be expected to do it with ebooks. For that matter, Kindle-land has just one Greek font, which is no better than having one font for Latin letters.

I wonder what the Kindle edition of Twain's "Gilded Age" does with the chapter epigrams in everything from Greek and Latin to Coptic and Akkadian?

I'm not sure I'd pay for more than that, unless I could be assured the digital typography were truly superior. In general, I don't think the platforms give designers enough tools to really get that right--kerning, for example, or hanging quotes. Nor are the displays really up to capturing those subtleties.

>7 timspalding:

You will not be allowed to print your ebook --> then you are making an illegal copy ;-)

>I wonder what such a promise could consist of and whether the quality would be made explicit. Since about 15 years I see more typos in printed books than in editions published before the the use of the computer.

> 7

I agree with the points made by Tim in #7, but these features are already part of the print-edition market, e.g. the difference between "Penguin Popular Classics" (= basic text only) and "Penguin Classics" (= basic text + critical introduction + notes). Another example are the Norton editions where you get half the volume in extras i.e. all kinds of extra back ground and critical essays added on.

But these issues do not address the main point of the OP, which is the "material" issue. The difference between a hardcover and soft cover edition (or Folio edition) is only the aesthetically pleasing material pect of the book, as there are binding, paper quality, design, size, weight, (smell), etc.

I have not yet bought an ereader. Currently, I am only watching and following the developments. What I miss in many reviews of ereaders (devices) is the loss of the "feeling" of reading a book. I suppose in an ebook there are no page numbers? How will people refer to parts of the book. Is there any satisfaction in reading a very thick book (well, you may have read 63% of it on a slide bar). I would probably go for the better editions, but will miss a lot of pleasure *holding* a book, and looking at it on my shelves.

To stay with Lola's food metaphor, it seems as if an ereader stands to a hospital meal, as a paper edition to a culinary experience in a really nice restaurant (Brasserie Flo). And then imagine that you actually are goaded into paying the same price, haha.

I suppose the book store lobby (if ever there is such a thing) will go for premium editions which include a paper version of the book in various kinds of quality binding.

I suppose in an ebook there are no page numbers? How will people refer to parts of the book.

The epub books that I've bought (or gotten for free) from Barnes and Noble have page numbers. They are apparently based on the page numbers from the edition of the book they've been created from. So if the ebook was made from a hardcover book, then the page numbers will reflect the pages in the hardcover version of the book, not the paperback. Because the pages on my NookColor aren't as large as a page from a paperback or hardcover book, the page numbers will sometimes cover more than one page. For example, I'll be on page 86 for three page turns in a row. This way, though, if I'm discussing something that happened on a page in the book with you, who doesn't have an e-reader, or my dad, who would use much larger text size, and his pages would cover 5 pages on the Nook, we still have a common frame of reference. The pages might be off by a page in either direction, I guess, because of the way the text flows, but that's not a very large number of pages to scan, to find the part in question.

I don't know if Kindle books, or Sony books, or any others have that same capability.

>10 edwinbcn:,11
The Kindle books have positions - which are not tied to the print edition but they exist and can be used as references... And the thicker the book, the bigger the last position number is. It takes some time getting used to them but they are not that different from pages really - except that they are much higher in values :) Besides - most books have chapters...

>1 timspalding:
I kinda do not see e-books getting Folio Society type of editions... it's just data...

Amazon very recently announced page numbers are coming to the Kindle.

Enhanced e-textbooks are a logical extension of the common book/CD-ROM combo, but adoption even for these has been somewhat slow. For an interesting presentation on e-textbooks, see here: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=10&ved=0CGkQFjAJ&ur... with a counterpoint article from the Chronicle of Higher Education here: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/students-remain-reluctant-to-try-e-textbo...

8.> "You will not be allowed to print your ebook --> then you are making an illegal copy ;-)"

Not always true. Some publishers do allow printing of ebooks for personal use... but they are, admittedly, few and far between. I know this because I do have a few ebooks where printing has been allowed.

13.> "Amazon very recently announced page numbers are coming to the Kindle."

That's true for the Kindle 3 and various Kindle apps, but so far not true for Kindle 1 or 2... and probably also not for the Kindle DX, since it is not much more than a big version of the K2.

11... the old Sony PRS-500 ereader I have does work as you describe (page numbers, with there being e.g. three screens full for each page at size medium) when I read pdf's on it. I haven't tried installing their "store" software to buy their special ebooks and I haven't seen the newer versions but it does kind of set a minimum as to what the Sony books do. (However, it does use the older PDF idea where the first page is always page 1 which can be mildly confusing when the first page "should be" i or 5 or 517, which happens frequently in journal articles I read.) (I only got this over Christmas as a freebie from my boyfriend's sister-in-law's brother-in-law, who happened to go to the same high school as I did, a thousand miles away. So haven't experimented w/ it as much as I'd like.)

I could see the possibility of a "Folio Society" (resolution and typography tools would have to be MUCH MUCH better though to be worth paying $15 instead of $5 per book) or a "Norton Critical Editions" series (would need advanced annotation/bookmarking/etc. tools, maybe better suited to e.g. an iPad or an Android device), but given that HarperCollins doesn't want to license library ebooks for more than 26 loan periods, I don't suspect they will want people to be that serious about their ebooks either.

#11 "What I miss in many reviews of ereaders (devices) is the loss of the "feeling" of reading a book. I suppose in an ebook there are no page numbers? How will people refer to parts of the book. Is there any satisfaction in reading a very thick book (well, you may have read 63% of it on a slide bar). I would probably go for the better editions, but will miss a lot of pleasure *holding* a book, and looking at it on my shelves.
"

Page numbers - as above, most Epub devices have them, some with ebook page numbers (but text indexes with different page numbers on them!), some complete ebook numbering and some with pbook numbering that doesn't readily corrispond with the ebook version. You can though bookmark pages you want to remember.

There is no loss of "feeling of reading a book". I feel exactly the same reading pbook to ebook. You very very quickly only see the words, not the format. Only your hands never get tired from the weight, unlike with a big hardback.

Throughout the industry better proofchecking is required. Many pbooks are now far from perfect, but the ebook industry is worse. These are paid for 'proper' editions, not pirated copies. I've had to send one or two back to the publisher for a refund, because the formatting was so poor. Depending on who pirated it and why, they could actually have taken more care over the process than the publisher does. Fortunetly editing the file yourself isn't that difficult - but I'm not paying publishers in order to do their work for them!

I agree that you will get 'special edition' ebooks which feature more content - Stephen Fry's book, The Fry Chronicles last year was probably the first example, with the iBookstore edition feature videos which weren't in the version available in (for example) the Kindle edition.

Page numbering is difficult, since every device renders the epub file differently and it's impossible to cater for this within the production process. There are ways of dealing with complicated footnoting (e.g. in Shakespeare), it just requires a bit of ingenuity regarding the structure of the book. But even then, you end up faced with the limitations of the devices - the file format that Amazon use is just not as good as epub and cannot cope with complicated formating or structure. Hopefully that will change in the future!

>13 WalkerMedia:, 17

I read on the cover of my ARC for Frederick Kempe's Berlin 1961 that the eBook will be an "Amplified eBook" and feature "historical video footage and other extras." I was wondering if that was available before, hadn't seen any examples. This is published by Putnam / Penguin Group.

Has anyone used an eBook with video, etc? Is it impressive or a gimmick?

Folio Society books give you attractive aesthetic design, the pleasure of handling something made by craftsmen, and something pretty to display on your shelves. An ebook might conceivably achieve the first of these benefits, but you'll never get the other two. You can't talk about craftsmanship when every copy is identical and it's the same effort to publish one copy or a million.

The "critical edition" thing will probably eventually become important for ebooks. At the moment portable readers aren't really at a stage where they can take advantage of it (the web is a rather better medium for pop-up footnotes, parallel translations, visualising variant editions, and all the rest), but I'm sure it will come and some of us might be prepared to pay for it. As we've said elsewhere, it's one of the few areas where ebooks could have added value over paper. But there's not a huge incentive for publishers to make them available for the portable reader market - if you're writing a paper you want the book displayed on your PC, not on some piddling little pocket screen.

I back thorld's comments about Folio. I have been a member of the Folio Society for roughly twenty or so years. There is no comparison for what Folio does the feel of a book. It's cover, the feeling of the paper and the way the binding opens the book. I have a couple of hundred Folios so I have enough to read if they stop now. They won't and will I continue to buy Folio books. There was an example where Amazon issued a book and then they found out that they didn't have the rights for the book after all. So they entered the various kindles and erased the book iun question. They sent a note saying sorry and redeemed the cash spent. Give me my physical books.

Is there something like the Folio Society for ebooks? Is such an idea possible?

The TeX Community have an interest in doing digital typography well. The classic taocp is an example of work in book form done with the toolset. To render the same content in any ebook form, I suppose would be easier and it could have extra features like animated diagrams and hyperlinking.

The first epub book I bought was a rush-rubbish-job, missing table of contents and diagrams. It was a bad experience on the latest device. I found a Project Gutenberg copy with the missing parts but the diagrams were at too low a resolution.

I've just bought my second ebook, $15 with [after] 50% discount, it is DRM-free, the publisher has ePub, Mobi, PDF variants for download and it'll always be available in my account. The work is an early release edition, I'll get the final post-production ebook version. Before then, I get to experience the work as it is drafted.

If there is no eFolio Society, why won't authors, editors, artists, technicians (for example) combine to create one? Here is an example of work with income reporting and here's an opinion on the book going the way of the LP (25:54 minute audio). And, five ePublishing job openings here and industry gathering here. (New York, NY)

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