Franzen and Technology

Franzen and Technology
James Oliver Smith, Jr
2012 0131

The Telegraph in Britain posted an article with the headline: "Jonathan Franzen: e-books are damaging society" (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/9047981/Jonathan-Franzen-e-books-are-damaging-society.html). Franzen had given a speech at the Hay Festival in Cartagena, Colombia, Britain's "top Festival of the Arts" (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/). I was reading the article on the web, through a netbook connected to the internet trough a wifi access point in a coffee shop in the Open Book, a literary center in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States, 4000 miles away. The article starts off saying that "consumers had been conned into thinking that they need the latest technology." This is interesting to me because it was through many levels of technology that I was able to read what he said. I guess you could say that I "needed" this technology to hear his message. Was I "conned" into thinking that I needed this technology to even be aware that this speech was given? Well, I guess I could have waited several months for his speech to be written down on paper, transported via carriage to a ship, sailed to the U.S. and galloped in a satchel on horseback to the distant plains of Minnesota.

He goes on to say that his "favorite" technology is a paperback book, a technology that he can spill water on and it will "still work". Now, I have spilled more than my share of water on paper books and I have had to throw many of them away since they were unreadable because the book fell apart, the ink ran or the pages stuck together, so the point seems to be somewhat irrelevant. Seeming to believe that his point was well made he states that for "serious" readers "permanence" is "part of the experience". Then he follows up saying that everything in life is "fuid" and that "text" doesn't change. This is where he looses me entirely. He steps away from the medium on which a text is displayed (the treebook, presumably) and refers to the text itself, implying that "permanence" is somehow accomplished through the binding of a treebook to the text. I guess he hasn't paid much attention the many variations of classical texts published on papyrus, vellum and wood pulp over the centuries.

His efforts to pin "capitalism" to the advent of ebooks also seems rather strained since it is the capitalist brick and mortar and treebook publishing industry that is being pulled into the ebook publishing domain againsts it capitalistic will. It is consumer demand driving the process more than any capitalistic impulse, in much the same way that consumer download sites drove the music industry into the debundled world of lower cost music sales. Project Gutenburg has been preserving (for free) the texts of thousands of out-of-print and out-of-copyright books in digital archives since 1972, long before the current ebook technologies were feasible. This has made many books available that were long forgotten and buried by the traditional publishing industry. Ebooks are simply the next step in the reading experience, one in which the user controls the presentation of the "permanent" text.

He claims that electronic text is somehow more tempting to "delete", "change" and "move" than (presumably) non-electronic text. What? I have been in many a coffee house, office and workshop in which I have seen handwritten and manually typed (before word processors) manuscripts marked up, scratched out and manually cut up and moved. I have no idea what universe Mr. Franzen has been living in, but it seems to have no relevance to the universe I have experienced for the past 60 years. It must be the same universe where all families are nuclear, all wars are justified and all indigenous people have lived in harmony with the environment.

Moving on to an appreciation for a U.S. President who reads (Obama), the ineffectiveness of European politicians and a response to accusationsthat there is no religion in his novels, he ends up saying "To be honest, I'm thinking much more about science than about religion when I'm writing. To me, art itself is a religion." In other words, "Science" is the foundation of his "art" which is his "religion." Since "science" is the foundation upon which technology is built I wonder if Mr. Franzen was "conned" (by capitalism) into needing "science" to create "art", his "religion" ... il matto ...

(c) James Oliver Smith, Jr.

Treebooks to ebooks ...

I have many times (hundreds, in fact) purchased books not available in the Kindle store and have become quite efficient at dissasembling/breaking down the book, scanning them to pdf, running Optical Character Recognition software (Adobe Acrobat), extracting the generated text and creating an ebook for a Kindle (html->kindlegen->prc->Kindle). Fortunately today, high density drives, portable scanners OCR software is relatively inexpensive. The most expensive part of the process of Adobe Acrobat, and as soon as I find a decent open source substitute for the scanner->ocr->pdf steps I’m all over it … Generally, when a treebook is not available as a Kindle ebook, I will buy the cheapest used treebook and break it down for scanning as soon as I receive it. Sometimes, if I want a _good_ ebook with decent hyperlink navigation (which is rare in the Kindle store, or anywhere for that matter) I will get the treebook anyway and construct the ebook the way I want it, with rich hyperlink navigation within the ebook … Each of the steps from treebook to ebook are reasonable straightforward, but there are many techniques that one has to master to bring it all together effectively, in addition to understanding the tools themselves (scanner software, OCR software, etc), and even then some books a quite simply difficult … At this point I can convert a 300 page treebook into a first draft ebook within four hours or so … then the proofreading of the OCR’ed text begins, although I have done some of that while creating the ebook … il matto …

Kindle Green?

I think it is fair to say the both Brick and Mortar and Tree book distribution idustrial complex and digital distribution complex are deep, firmly established and extensive. It would be interesting to see some studies on the ecological footprint of both. It is kind of like trying to make an argument for the “greeness” of bicycles without considering the significant infrastructure required to design, manufacture and distribute bicycles.
Here are my personal observations on the use of ebooks and why I have scanned every one of the hundreds of books in my library at home and have been converting them to Kindle books:
1. my aging and declining (due to glaucoma) eyes simply can’t read physical books any more. There is not enough contrast between page and characters and no way to dynamically change the font size as I needed it.
2. my wife’s allergies are activated by the dust, mold and mites that accumulate within books over time. Digital books have solved this problem entirely.
3. I can take notes on my Kindle books, synchronize them to the web, where I can paste them into in number of documents I am working on, not to mention the backup scenario this represents.
4. I no longer have to decide which books I take with me on a trip. I take them all.
5. The Kindle allows me browse the web and read articles without the eye-killing effects of back-lite screens, which are very difficult for anyone with aging or defective eyes.
6. I am able to proofread documents digitally without ever printing them by downloading the text into my Kindle (from my cloud server). I then work through my notes with the Kindle on my side while I correct the document on my workstation.
7. When I attend class, I use three Kindles: one for the text, one for notes and one for browsing the web. With three kindles i have replaced a full, back-breaking backpack with devices that take care of all my needs, and I don’t have to find a seat close to an outlet (as was the case when i went to class with a laptop).
8. Without books we are able to live in a smaller space with cleaner air.
9. I use public transportation and my Kindle allows me to keep track of my email, read the news, read for pleasure, read for work and it doesn’t matter how long the ride takes. 10. With the Kindle my back is happier, my eyes are happier and my lungs are happier. … Il Matto …

The techniques and the tools for creating ebooks from tree books

The techniques and the tools for scanning tree books and creating ebooks have evolved over the past five years since I started scanning my tree books. The scanner technology I use now is a full duplex portable scanner that I put next to my desktop and feed, a page at a time. The full duplex scanner (a Scanshell 3000D) allows both sides of the page to be scanned at once, which really speeds things up from the original half-duplex Scanshell scanners I was using. The pull-through scanner is much faster than the flatbed scanner. The disadvantage is, of course, that you have to disassemble the book in order to feed the pages into the scanner. These days, physical books have no value to me, especially since my vision has been deteriorating due to glaucoma, and my wife’s allergies. Her eyes also need the Kindle for other reasons.

The format I scan into is pdf, which is still, in my mind, the best overall format for document processing, even if it is a lousy format for ebooks because of its bloated nature. I use Adobe Acrobat to optically scan the page images (OCR, Optical Character Recognition). In my pre-Kindle days, when I was creating ebooks for the Sony PRS-500, 505, 700 ebook readers, I extracted the text to Word, designed the ebook and then rendered the pdf using the Adobe plugin in Word. This preserved the Word hyperlinks as pdf links. That worked fine for me for the Sony series. But when the Kindle arrived, with all of its compelling features (Internet access, Notes with backup, etc), I started down the path of converting all of my books to the prc format for the Kindle.

it takes about an hour to scan a 300 page, average sized book (there are a lot of variables here) and another hour to OCR, extract and create a rough ebook for the Kindle. Obviously, I’ve got the techniques down pretty good so I know how to break down the books, scan them, OCR then, extract the text and drop the text into a template quite quickly. Then there is the process of proofreading the OCR-ed text and crafting the book.

I actually enjoy the process. The scanning i multi-task by watching Italian television and movies (on the web and from my collection of avi movies) while feeding the pages. The book design process is very rewarding as the ebook takes shape and comes alive with hypertext.

You can check out some of the books I have developed for the Kindle by navigating your Kindle to:
http://cyberkindle.com

and then clicking on the CyberPoet Press links. This will present a dynamically generated list of the Kindle (prc) books that I have moved on the cyberkindle.com site. This is a site that I have just started to develop, so feel free to check it out. My plan is for this site to be entirely Kindle friendly, with links to many places … stay tuned … feedback will always be welcome. … Il Matto …

Epub and Kindle?

It's a good sign that Amazon is working with, in some way, the competing epub ebook format. The key now is whether the formatting configured within the epub format maps exactly into the generated azw format. The difficulty for the ebook designer is that there is no way (yet) to test the azw format that will actually be published _before_ it is actually deployed ... This is why I focus so much on the Mobipocket tools. The azw format was developed from the prc format, and since MobiPocket is owned by Amazon there is an incentive to ensure that the prc maps well to the azw format. The dialect of HTML used within the Mobipocket context uses specialized tags (like the mbp page break) that I really love use all of the time. It is criical to my book designs.

Obviously, hyperlinks are paramount for good ebook design and that is where the design of an ebook can fall apart. I want to make sure that the ebooks published function and look exactly like the ebooks I have designed and tested. This is the primary reason that I am publishing public domain texts through the DTP. That way I can experiment with the designs without compromising the ebooks I design from my own books later. If you key in 'cyberpoet' on the Kindle store you will see the public domain books I have designed. I only charge .99, and they are texts that you can get for free elsewhere, but not with the hyperlinks imbedded (typically), unless I have put them on my cyberkindle.com site, which are also free. In short, most of this is experimentation. One of the nice things about publishing a book through DTP is that you can then use the wonderful notes feature, with web backup, that I use all of the time.

I will do some experimenting with the epub tools in this regard, but my work with it so far has demonstrated a great deal of inconsistency within the world of epub generating and reading tools, so I have proceeded with a great deal of caution. I have no doubt that Amazon is taking the same cautious approach. It will get there, but there is quite a way to go.

... Il Matto ...

Would I grab my Kindle in a fire?

Actually, if there is a fire that I need to escape from, I would not worry about my Kindle since all of my books are in my Kindle library at Amazon, along with my notes. I would just get out of the house, call Amazon.com, get my replacement Kindle and download all my books again ... After all, it is the service and books that are important, not the individual reading device, that is important in the longrun ... there will always be a new Kindle device to replace a broken, burned up or worn out Kindle device. How is this any different than dropping a Kindle and breaking it, or a battery gone dead? ... il Matto ...

My ebook reader criteria

There is a reason that paper backs are the size that they are, and the 6" Kindle is that size. I take my kindles (yes, multiple, between two and four all of time), everywhere ... Although my wife uses the DX, I don't, it is simply too big and too heavy ... beyond that, my criteria for ebook readers are: 1. eink, 2. open access to the internet (I check my email, read web news, blogs, etc) ... no wi-fi only for me, 2. I can easily create ebooks for my Kindle and download them from my cloud servers; 3. a physical keyboard (faster, touch-type, great for notes, does not take up screen real estate; 4. Notes synced/backed up to the internet). 5. you can download a book to all of your Kindles (up to the publisher's limit, if specified). Plus when you buy a Kindle book, it is available on any applicaiton-driven device that has the Kindle application. There is no other reader with all of these qualities ... Il Matto ...