dissertation subject ebooks?

[dMores]

i seem to have infected my girlfriend with the eBook virus, because now she's not only reading them, but wants to write her dissertation on them.
(you know, the thing you write after your master's, to be a Dr.(Phil))

anyways, there are a lot of questions that came up when we discussed, how she should proceed.
there are other people writing on ebooks, some technical analyses (analysises?), others are writing about how messed up the ebook scene is (different formats is bad. or so they say. guess they never heard of GIF/JPG/TIF or MP3/OGG/WAV living along peacefully).

she would like to use statistical data, but i'm thinking that ereader.com, mobipocket, fictionwise etc. are not too keen on giving her the number of downloads, or sociological statistics.
she finished her "comparative literature" studies, so it would have to do something with literature, not ebooks in themselves.

i'm trying to get her to write something that could, theoretically, be found in a bookstore. so nothing that's so specific that only 5 people on the planet would find it interesting to read. like, publishable.
and i guess it shouldn't be too technical, since it would be out-dated once she finishes writing and hands it in.

maybe some of you could provide some input.
thanks.

[surur]

I would suggest, unless its too far, she would have much better access to the various e-book companies if she was able to visit their headquarters and actually talk to them, and be able to e.g. sign a NDA there and then. Most people don't trust e-mail these days.

Regarding the ebook scene, I think the greatest problem is the lack of big author selection, and the prices not being a lot less than a physical book. They could also do with a better "discovery" or suggestion system, so after finishing one book one can move on to another. Also I think book covers are not displayed prominently enough on websites. Books are designed to be judged by their covers (not to mention the blurb at the back).

I guess the biggest problem is the lack of the bookstore browsing experience. The one who can perfect the right interface will win the scene (imagine a flash website with a large selection of book covers which you can quickly (and smoothly) scroll through, flip over and read the back, and then flip through a few pages). The navigation of webpage based bookstores leave much to be desired.

Surur

[dMores]

hmm ... we live in austria/europe, so i have doubts she will be able to afford the cost of transportation to various headquarters.
but the suggestion is good ... maybe old snail-mail would be wiser than email.

your other comments are valuable as well ... i'll relay them to my darling so she can mind them when she does her abstract/table of contents.

thanks!

[SteveHoward999]

You can see how many times a book has been purchased when you browse Fictionwise. I suppose the other bookstores are the same. Doesn't quite give you full stats, but I am sure there is enough to make a start ...

How about she looks at trends and tries to see where we will be in 5, 10 or more years with eBooks? She can look at:-

Paper book sales/trends
eBook sales/trends
Sales of devices capable of reading the books - PC, Laptop, Tablet, PDA, Smartphone, dedicated reading machines.
What about Audio books? Audible.com sells tons of books to iPod users who (I presume) like to have books read to them as they commute.


By exploring past and current trends in these devices she should be able to come up with a picture for the future. for instance ...

I am a relatively heavy reader and I have a library of around 1000 books at home that take up a huge amount of shelf space. I have not bought a single book in the last 3 years, since I discovered PDA + MSReader. I now have a library of around 120 -150 electronic books that can all fit on one SD card. On storage, conveniance and portability grounds there is no
contest between paper and electronic books ...

The medical industry in particular seems to have embraced electronic books, and PDAs in particular, for their portability and ease of use. There are thousands of text books, reference books and scores of tools (e.g. drug dose calculators) targetted at doctors.

Students are becoming more and more aware of the advantages of PDA + electronic books. many popular text books are now available in electronic format ... with many you can buy the paper book and get an electronic version of the book on CD that you can transfer to PDA.



I think your girlfriend could finds loads of research resources to help come up with a long-term view of the development and use of electronic books and devices.

[SteveHoward999]

she finished her "comparative literature" studies, so it would have to do something with literature, not ebooks in themselves.


Hmmm - kinda blows out a lot of what I just said. By the way, I am less skeptical at the possibility of getting statistical information. For a start you don't seem to have considered going to the publishers instead of to the book sellers.


So comparative literature ... you want to discuss the books that are being read? I still think it would be valuable to study what doctors and other students read. That, at least, narrows the focus instead of trying to study what 'ordinary members of the public' are reading.

[dMores]

thanks steve for your lenghty input.

yes, it should be something concerning literature, as opposed to regular text.
also, since she's writing a scientific thing, you need to comply with some rules. one of those is you cannot really write about where something is going. i know it would be interesting to say that in 5 years ebooks will have replaced paper etc. but she can't do that, unfortunately.

anyhow, she talked to the perfesser and he's in love with the topic.
your comment about medical ebooks sparked a memory of a loox user telling me how many med ebooks they're using at university and in hospitals, i'm sure my gf can incorporate this into her work.

going to the publishers is probably tedious, since she'd have to talk with a LOT of them to be able to draw conclusions.
having said that, it IS a dissertation and not some school paper ;)

i didn't know there were paper books that come with eBook CDs.
do you have any more info on this? where you can get them, maybe what publisher decided to start this, etc?

comparative literature: initially she wanted to analyse ebooks by german authors. her perfesser told her she needs to compare with other languages (i guess that's what they do mainly. compare translations of one and the same book) so i think this actually opens up a lot more possibilities. since german lit is probably not as wide-spread, it would be hard to compare jelinek (austrian nobel prize winner 2005) in german and english because i don't think her books are translated at all.
however, english books available as german ebooks, that will yield a higher score :)

she will also do research from different angles.
get PPC users who read (quess where it will be announced ;) ) as well as non-geek-lit-buffs from other sites to fill out a questionnaire.
now that i'm aware of the medical ebook phletora, i should find her a bunch of medical forums/newsgroups and get them to participate in her poll as well.

great :)

[disconnected]

I don't know if you've visited teleread.org, but it has a weblog that's updated almost daily with comments and articles about the state of ebookdom.

[dMores]

that's an excellent link!
the start page looks horrible :)
but the blog is very interesting. chock full of links about technology, authors, legal matter and the newest gadgets.
(ebooks for your iPod ? whoa!)

[SteveHoward999]

i didn't know there were paper books that come with eBook CDs.
do you have any more info on this? where you can get them, maybe what publisher decided to start this, etc?


The one book that I can point right at is Flash 5 Bible. I bought this about 3 or possibly 4 years ago and it has the complete book in PDF format on the CD along with numerous other resources.
Looks to be published by www.hungryminds.com, which appears to have been taken over by Wiley http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/. This is the book

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0764535153.html

I expect that you will find many of their software-education titles contain electronic versions of the books. I really don't have any hard information to hand about other books or publishers.

HTH

[uwaku]

You might also check out the Baen ebook library. Baen publishing releases Sci-Fi & Fantasy books, but not long ago began hosting ebooks from many of their authors, and many are free. You can browse the books here: http://www.webscription.net/free/

The explanation I read said they'd decided that giving away free earlier works would spur interest in an author's later works. I just loved being able to read the entire Honor Harrington series by David Drake, et al.

Finally, the main reason I went with ebooks was due to the war in Iraq. When I deployed, instead of carrying around a huge box of paperbacks, I carried a couple of CDs of ebooks to transfer to my old HandEra 330. It's much easier to haul & ship that than the box of books...

[dMores]

not only did you just help my girlfriend, but i now also found a new source for free ebooks that are non-bible or non-computer-instructions!!!

thank you!

[uwaku]

There are so many more than that. Look through the rest of this thread. Memoware, Gutenburg, etc... I have over 8,000 ebooks in every format from TXT, PDF, PRC, PDB, LIT, etc, along with the conversion utilities so that my PPC and myy wife's Palm can read them all.

There are no limits...

[Nurhisham Hussein]

Baen also issues CDs with their hard cover books - not just an ebook version of the book itself but complete copies of previous works of that author and samples of other authors as well.

[dMores]

i do know gutenberg, unfortunately they only have books where the author has been dead for more than 70 years, meaning they're not copyrighted.

memoware was where i purchased my first ever ebook online :)
i guess i'm not that happy with their choice of free books, since they're mostly by completely unknown authors, and bibles of all kinds, and a bunch of FBI/CIA fact books.

i'm not sure i like a cd with excerpts from other works of the author.
that's a bit like watching trailers of other movies on a dvd you buy.
i don't watch those :) and i don't read excerpts.
i usually take advice from other readers, forums etc. regarding thrillers, or crime etc and try to read books in the order they're published/meant to be read.
(usually when it's a series, like kay scarpetta (patricia cornwell), lincoln rhyme (jeffrey deaver) etc.)
but getting the ebook along with the print version is an excellent solution, i will check out my local english bookshop (i live in austria, and only read books in original language ... except those by finnish authors :))

thanks for your input, guys!

[Nurhisham Hussein]

With regard to the Baen CDs, I believe what you get is the whole back library of the author, not excerpts, e.g. for David Weber's Honor Harrington series, you get full ebook versions (in various formats) of all the previously published books and not just the current one:

http://www.baen.com/press.htm#ALL%20HELL%20IS%20BREAKING%20OUT