Saturday, June 25, 2011

Whooooo HOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

So JK Rowling is finally - FINALLY! - releasing all the Harry Potter books as ebooks. She was one of the most vocal opponents of digital publishing, because it's cool if wizard books have changing pages and pictures, but it's not cool if muggles get ideas above their station. It would be lovely to be a wizard and have all your stuff look like it's the 19th century but magically have all the advantages of the 21st century, but some of us embrace technology (and then steampunk it so it looks like the 19th century). Ahem. Anyway, this is awesome, and it will make my customers very very happy in NOOKland.

Now for a touch of irony. Those of you hang on my every post will recall that I said Amazon's insistence on a proprietary format for the Kindle was not at all the Coming Thing. Well now they've met with a dose of their own medicine, since Rowling is releasing the books solely through a website of her own called Pottermore, which will apparently offer content beyond just downloading the books. Here's the kicker - it may just have them available as epub. I'm chuckling. My guess is that she may give in and offer Amazon's ridiculous format, but I hope not. It's about time Amazon got into the real ereader market. If they think they can't make a profit selling hardware and using convenience to incentivize customers to shop their ebook store, then that's their tough luck. You don't see Barnes and Noble complaining about NOOK customers buying books through Google and Gutenberg. One of the NOOK's biggest selling points is the fact you can get ebooks from the library for free. That's the Coming Thing.

I just thought I'd share. Proprietary formats get my dander up. If you can't keep your customers by giving the best product and service, then you probably don't deserve them.
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1 comment:

  1. Sophia's FavoriteJune 27, 2011 at 12:57 AM

    Ahem. I point you to Abe no Seimei's corollary to Clarke's Third Law: magic and technology are alike parts of nonbeing.

    But maybe she noticed a pressure drop in the unholy cash faucet her books are, and she decided to give in on her unlettered Luddism to try and make the gravy train's stopover last a little longer. Yes I know I used two different metaphors for the same thing: the extravagance is itself a metaphor for Rowling's super-Croesian wealth!

    Super-Croesian is a word I just made up, it means "more than Croesus". Whoever Croesus was, apparently he was rich. Not as rich as Rowling, but then, she only travels on a giant serving plate made of solid gold, carried by fifteen corpulent eunuchs—she uses the corpulent eunuchs rather than lean and muscular ones (as you or I might), because every other day she has three of them rendered down into oil to heat her palatial mansion. Then three more take their place. And that oil is enough to heat the mansion because it's insulated entirely in the hair of virgins of the Thai royal family.

    It's a sordid lifestyle.

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