I’m intrigued about the strategic implications of an exclusive like this. But as a book reader, somehow it feels wrong for books to be “exclusive” to a proprietary software platform.
But while this edition of the books are exclusive to iBooks, the books themselves are available on many platforms. And available unencumbered by copy protection.
I put together an online iCloud photo album with some pictures comparing books with the same or equivalent e-book on iPad Air and iPad Pro.
While the iPad Air is a better size for typical novels and articles, the iPad Pro is (IMHO) better for textbooks† (like technical books and RPG books) and comic books.
Digest-sized RPG books are often better on the Air. Although, the Pro does allow viewing two of them side-by-side.
Unfortunately, to get the two books side-by-side I had to load them into different apps. (In this case, iBooks and PDF Expert.) Although I haven’t played with PDF Expert enough to know what it can do. My PDF app of choice, GoodReader, hasn’t been updated to support side-by-side or to fully support the iPad Pro yet.
Being able to view two arbitrary pages in the same PDF side-by-side could be useful too. While you could do this with the two apps workaround, it would be better if a single app added such a feature. GoodReader has the ability to open multiple pages from one PDF in separate tabs, so that seems a reasonable addition to better support the iPad Pro.
But being able to view a book at full iPad Air size on one side of the Pro while having another app—e.g. Pages, UX Writer, Evernote, etc.—at full iPad Air size on the other side seems promising.
†Ironic that the word “textbook” seems รก propos to me here since what distinguishes these from typical novels and articles is that they have lots of images, tables, and diagrams in addition to text.
“Runequest archive products being retired at OBS”
This is extremely myopic. One of the great benefits of e-books is that books don’t have to go out-of-print and (potentially at least) become hard-to-find.
What is the message they’re sending to customers who would like to buy these books? If someone wants to give them money for these products instead of (or in addition to) the more recent books, that customer doesn’t care why they’ve been “retired”. They just hear, “No, we don’t want your money.” At best.
I recently bought the Star Wars Omnibus: A Long Time Ago..., Volume 1, which has the first 26 issues of the 1970s Marvel comics.
I had a giant version of the original six issues that covered the original movie, as well as normal-sized copies of a few of the following issues.
Looking through it, it occurs to me that—in the days before we had a VCR—this was as much Star Wars to me as the movie itself. I only saw the movie once (until years later), but I read these comics over-and-over.
They even had deleted scenes...
This issue: Comixology has been the #1 way to buy and read digital comic books on iPads. Amazon bought Comixology. It is no longer possibly to buy comics through the Comixology app, presumably because Amazon isn’t willing to continue paying the 30% that Apple requires of in-app purchase.
Oddly enough, this has proved to be a positive for me. My local comic book store has a Comixology web store. When I buy digital comic books from it, I still read them on my iPad, but I also support my local store. In-app purchase going away made me actually do that.
It seems to me that what Apple makes off of their 30% of in-app purchases is peanuts compared to their primary sources of income. I would think Apple would be more interested in improving the user experience than on holding the line on their 30% cut.
On the other hand, I’m not convinced the damage to the user experience here is all that great. I still buy Kindle books. I still by Comixology books.
One interesting difference between the Kindle app and the new Comixology app: In the Comixology app, you can still browse their store and add things to your wishlist.
I don’t know that I’ve ever put it this way before, but it seemed so simple when I did.
Except perhaps in some very specific circumstances, I have not been convinced that anti-piracy measures ever increase sales, much less pay for themselves.
Piracy doesn’t matter; sales do. Any anti-piracy measure has to prove that it is going to generate additional sales to more than make up for its costs.
About Kindle MatchBook, Gruber writes...
This is the e-book/print combination I've wanted since 2007.
But it’s too late. I do still get print copies of books shipped to me on occasion, but almost never when buying from Amazon.
Yet, there are sadly books I still can buy in digital form.
A PDF should be more than a facsimile of a print product.
I agree with that, but only a bit. There are a few things beyond print that should be provided: Providing bookmarks and making sure the text is searchable and copyable.
But the one reason for choosing PDF is that it is the best digital format for print products. Sure it has lots of digital features. If you’re really serious about making an digital product, however, you should be looking beyond PDF.
Of course, other formats have their issues. Sometimes people come back to PDF because that print-basis makes it seem more mature, which arguably it is. But, if you’re trying to move beyond print, you need to move beyond a format with such a heavy print bias.
Here are some items on dndclassics.com that I thought were worth highlighting.
D&D Basic Set Rulebook (Moldvay edit): I may be biased. This was my first role-playing game purchase. I still think, however, that this is the best version of the game published under its own name. While it is heavily rooted in the original game; it is cleaned up, organized, and communicates more clearly than its predecessors. It’s compatible enough with all other TSR-era editions of D&D and AD&D that you can cherry pick bits from them when and if you want to expand on it.
This book only covers levels 1 to 3. With its companion Expert Set, you have a game that goes to level 14 and beyond. As I’m writing this, though, the Expert Set Rulebook is not yet available on dndclassics.com.
B2 The Keep on the Borderlands: This adventure came in the box set with the Basic Set Rulebook above. In some ways, I consider this as much part of the “core rules” as the Rulebook itself. It gives some practical advice and examples for Dungeon Masters.
HR1–7 The “historical reference” series: These are for me perhaps the best things to come out of the AD&D 2nd edition era. I’ve always liked a bit of history in my games. I think game books about history in some ways do a better job of giving you a feel for what historical periods were like than most history texts. Because they are more concerns with playing in that world rather than describing historically significant events. Here are the links:
Rules Compendium (3e): (Not to be confused with the Rules Cyclopedia, which I hope will appear on dndclassics.com in the future.) While the Wizards-era 3rd edition isn’t my favorite edition of the game; I do like it, and I do play it. So, I’m curious about a book that purports to bring the most important rules of that game together along with correcting errata. Although, I’m not sure it would be any more useful than the Hypertext d20 SRD.
Unearthed Arcana (3e): (Not to be confused with the first edition AD&D Unearthed Arcana which is not yet available through dndclassics.com.) This book may be the most “old school” book of the Wizards-era 3rd edition. Because it gives you all sorts of tools for modifying the game and making it your own. All the rules are also open content and available in the Hypertext d20 SRD. The book itself, however, also includes some helpful commentary.
Edit: ...and I have now purchased all the items on this list.
I’m going to talk about the next edition of D&D below so, a couple of points to begin with...
OK, now on to the thinking aloud...
First, we have what Mike Mearls wrote in “Legends and Lore: D&D Next Goals, Part Two”. I like what he says under the head “The Basic Rules”. This is what I want the the D&D brand to be doing for the hobby. And what’s good for the hobby is good for Wizards. By attracting more than just the people who like a single style, they will build a market they can sell lots of different RPGs to.
Which, I think, is the real answer to the fragmentation problem, which Next has the potential to exacerbate. Instead of trying to get everyone playing the same game, you “narrowcast” with multiple games. Especially since a lot of those customers will buy more than one of those games.
(I know that goes against the conventional wisdom of what TSR’s downfall was, but TSR had many and bigger problems.)
On a side note, I saw the question, “Why do you want more people to play D&D?” What I want is for everyone that would enjoy D&D or the hobby in general to be able to find it. For good or ill, most people’s first contact with the hobby will be D&D. So, if D&D is too heavily focused on a certain style of play, it gives lots of people the impression that it is representative of the hobby when its not. While a basic D&D may not be the game for everyone, it is more likely to send those who don’t like it looking for an RPG that they do like than to send them away thinking there is nothing in the hobby for them.
I don’t like some of the stuff under the head “Current Design Goals” in that Legends and Lore column, though.
Second, we have dndclassics.com. Good quality PDFs of older edition material with no DRM with text that is searchable through RPGNow (and DriveThruRPG). They even have the 1981 Basic booklet that is my favorite but which had never been offered in PDF in the past. I am happy to say that I am a Wizards of the Coast customer again.
Let’s assume for the moment that the Kindle Fire HD lives up to the expectations Amazon has given us. Perhaps the most interesting part is how Amazon differentiated themselves from Apple and other Android tablet makers. Amazon said they want to make money off the content they sell you for your devices rather than on selling the devices themselves.
Now, I’m not going to say that you can’t create on a Kindle Fire HD. Creative people will find creative ways to use any tool. But while Apple sells Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and GarageBand for the iPad; Amazon tells us that their tablets are about selling books, music, movies, and games.
(However much you think creating text content on an iPad doesn’t make sense, consider presentations, music, and graphics. Oh, and thanks to Posts, I’m creating this blog post entirely on my iPad.)
So, for instance, it seems (note “seems”) doubtful that the Fire will ever have the range of music production apps and accessories that the iPad has.
So, if you’re wondering why you should buy an iPad instead of a Fire HD, the big question is how much you want to use it to create and consume. If, for you, a tablet is mostly about consumption, a Kindle Fire might be the best choice for you.
And if you buy an iPad instead, Amazon still wins, because you can still buy your content from them and use it on your iPad. In fact, if you’re thinking about buying content to consume on your iPad from Amazon or Apple, you’re probably better off buying it from Amazon because, e.g., you can read Kindle books on nigh everything, but you can only read iBooks on an iPhone, an iPad, or an iPod touch.
I’m not the first person to ask this sort of question about e-books, but I’m going to ask it anyway.
To whomever it may concern: Why can’t I buy the Kindle edition of Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword? It is available at Amazon.co.uk but not Amazon.com.
Yes, I understand there are contracts and things. That’s completely missing the point. The point is that this e-book exists. I want to pay you money for it. I’m even willing to put up with your stupid copy protection. Yet, I can’t buy it. How does that make any sense? If you can’t fix it, why are you even clinging to your precious “rights”? Give up! You have failed.
On a brighter note, I paid Baen $35 for the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser collection, and it doesn’t come with copy protection.
Also of note is that some of Jack Vance’s works are available without copy protection. There are regional availability issues there too. Though the ones I looked at that aren’t available in the US are available through Amazon.com in the US...and some without copy protection.
And if you didn’t know: The Harry Potter books are available as e-books sans copy protection from Pottermore.
Joseph Bloch has an article about the PDFs of The One Ring are being withdrawn from the market.
I’ve said enough about how doing this tells a customer that you are either lying or stupid. Let’s look at it from a different point-of-view...
Here’s a problem if you are publishing RPG material: There is enough free, high-quality stuff out there that nobody needs to buy anything to fully participate in this hobby.
Ergo, if you are going to ask us to pay for your stuff, you have to earn our dollars. And today, a big part of that is digital editions.
And I mean useful digital editions. Any restraints you put on how we can view it, search it, print it, etc. makes it less useful and, thus, less valuable.
Say, you’re in a Half Price Books looking at the role-playing games. You’ll probably see some books that look like these. (Clicking it should show you a bigger version.)
(You may want to reference my D&D ID page and the time line in Wikipedia’s “Editions of Dungeons & Dragons” article while reading this.)
The top two represent first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons published by TSR. (Of course, it wasn’t called “first edition” at the time. That came later when second edition was published.) Later books had the orange spine. Some of the early books where later printed with new covers and the orange spine, but the contents are the same.
The third and fourth represent second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons published by TSR. Again, the fourth one is later books. Some of the earlier books where printed with new covers and spines to match this new trade dress but, again, the contents are the same. Note that the later books lack the handy “2nd Edition” text.
Note that all edition of the game published by TSR are highly compatible.
The fifth spine represents “third edition” Dungeons & Dragons published by Wizards of the Coast. Note, again, that there is nothing that explicitly says “third edition” here, although that’s what it is most commonly called.
The sixth spine represents “3.5” Dungeons & Dragons published by Wizards of the Coast. The “core” books did say “v.3.5” on the cover, but other books didn’t. Honestly, though, I don’t have enough 3.5 era books to tell you much about distinguishing 3.0 from 3.5. Mainly I do it through knowing pretty much all the 3.0 products, so if I don’t recognize it, it is probably 3.5. ^_^ The good news is that 3.0 and 3.5 are very compatible.
The seventh spine represents “fourth edition” Dungeons & Dragons published by Wizards of the Coast.
I believe there was only one hardback ever published for “classic D&D”. i.e. The “non-advanced” D&D published by TSR before and parallel with AD&D. That is the Rules Cyclopedia. Everything else for classic D&D was, I believe, saddle-stitched or boxed sets.
Of course, what you really need is a “pocket guide”, but this is what you get. ^_^
I’d love to do something like this for the perfect bound books as well, but I don’t actually have any of them.
Hey, Wizards of the Coast! If you’re reading this, I hope you’ll understand why I don’t think “D&D next” should just say “Dungeons & Dragons” on the cover. Even if I’m playing “D&D next”, I’m going to occasionally see second-hand books, and I’d like it to be easy to tell unambiguously if a book with “D&D” on the cover is intended for the game I’m playing or not. Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re going for the “make it easy to use anything from any edition”, but as a customer, I still want every book to tell me what edition it was originally intended for. I shouldn’t have to have the knowledge of a collector for this. There is zero reason for this confusion to exist. I know everyone at TSR and Wizards thought it made sense at the time to do what they did, but you were wrong. Please, do not contribute to the confusion. Thank you.
In the comments to the Grognardia post, “Books, young man. Books.”, faoladh writes:
When digital books improve considerably, I will consider going there, but for now they are too clumsy (especially for the particular sorts of use that game texts see), there are problems with issues of ownership vs. “licensing”, and they are too expensive for initial entry, among other potential problems.
I can’t say that faoladh is wrong. This is his opinion and experience, and I can’t argue with that. What I can do is look at my own experience and opinion...
I don’t bring books to sessions anymore, unless it is a book I can’t get a digital version of. I just bring my iPad.
The Hypertext d20 SRD site is, for me, better than the books. It has all the open content from several D&D 3.5 books in one location converted into easy-to-read and easy-to-navigate web pages including good hyperlinking. The licensing is clear enough and without issue. (Especially from the “I’m just playing the game” point-of-view.) And, it’s free.
I also really like the SpellbookMaster app that imports the SRD spells into a database.
I bought the Mekton Zeta and Mekton Zeta Plus books from RPGNow. Mekton Zeta Plus I actually bought, downloaded, and used in the middle of a session. They are watermarked PDFs and DRM-free. I don’t remember the prices I paid, but those PDFs are currently $10 and $12. They are pretty clumsy to use, but I have the same issue with the hardcopies. The problem is in the lay-out itself. In fact, the ability to add bookmarks to the PDF may actually make them a bit easier to use.
Not to mention the number of RPG books I can carry with me almost anywhere to read or reference at a moment’s notice.
And it really comes down to the iPad. It was the final piece of the puzzle that made this practical for me.
It seems like Lulu always has a discount code. It stops feeling like a deal when I know that as soon as one “limited time offer” expires, there will be another to replace it. Instead, it makes me feel like their “regular” prices are artificially high. The “limited time offer” stops having the effect it was designed to create.
This isn’t something Lulu invented of course. e.g. There’s a local music store I stopped shopping at years ago for the same reason.
After some research, I settled on the Olive Tree Bible Reader for iPad.
I really like the Tecarta app, but they didn’t have the NRSV. I really wanted a single app with—at least—the NRSV, the NIV, and the Message.
I used to just use Bible Gateway with my iPhone. It’s a fabulous site, works well with the iPhone, and is completely free. The one downside was that over 3G it was slow enough that I would still be loading when everyone else had already found the passage. Another downside was that the iPhone’s small screen was poorly suited to sharing with your neighbor.
Well, with the Olive Tree app and having the Bibles installed on the iPad, I now find passages while everyone else is still flipping pages. It felt almost like cheating. ^_^ Just four taps to get to any verse.
There is one really weird thing about the Olive Tree app. From the app store, you can buy different versions of it that come bundled with different Bibles. Then there is a sort of “generic” version that allows you to buy multiple translations via in-app purchases.
Once you log-in through one of the bundled versions of the app, Olive Tree will record that you have the bundled Bible (and other bundled books). You can then download those in the generic version of the app.
The weird part is that the versions of the app with the bundles are cheaper than buying the same books directly in the generic app via in-app purchase. So, instead of just buying the generic app and then the translations I wanted via in-app purchase, it was cheaper to buy all the individual bundled apps and then download all the books in the generic app.
It’s hard to even explain. It was confusing for me, and I suspect my background in software and e-books means it was easier for me to understand than for most of their customers.
In any case, I’m pretty happy with the final results. I have the KJV, the NRSV, the NIV, the NIrV, the TNIV, the Message, the ASV, the Vulgate, and the Bible in Esperanto all installed on my iPad in a single app. It’s quick to get to any verse. The search seems decent. And it will do split-screen to compare two versions side-by-side. I also have a couple of commentaries. (In split-screen mode, you can get the commentary for a passage next to the passage.) Plus a few other free e-books. Olive Tree seems to have a good selection of other Bibles, commentaries, and books to buy as well.
The number of times I want to read an e-book in direct sunlight: Almost never. The number of times I want to read an e-book in the dark: Nearly every night.
Selling an electronic edition of your book makes it more more susceptible to piracy, right? No, it just means you’re sticking your head in the sand.
In the video below, the company that digitized The Macintosh Way includes a bit of footage of their book scanning machine. It demonstrates not only how that book was reborn, but how easily pirates can turn your printed book into a illicit PDF.
To me, PDF has always been a very limited e-book format. It was good for a fairly limited range of things. For good or ill, however, it is the e-book format that has had the most success.
The iPad has changed things for me, though. For PDFs, it rivals print. For role-playing game books, I now want an electronic copy. (Formats other than PDF are welcome, though PDF if the most common.) Now, I can carry my library anywhere and get to any book in a few taps. I’ll still buy the occasional paper RPG book. If I can’t get an electronic copy, however, there’s a good chance I won’t actually use it.
From “Oxford English Dictionary ‘will not be printed again’”
Despite its worldwide reputation, the OED has never made a profit. The continuing research costs several million pounds a year. “These are the sort of long-term research projects which will never cover their costs, but are something that we choose to do,” Mr Portwood said.
Huh? So, if the price isn’t covering its costs, why price it so high? Better yet, why not price it high enough to cover the costs?
I always wished I could justify the cost of the OED. Or even a subscription to the online version. It’s kind of annoying to know a price that I can’t justify doesn’t even cover the costs.
