The University of Michigan Press is announcing today that it will shift its scholarly publishing from being primarily a traditional print operation to one that is primarily digital.
The story is here. Sigh. I realize the market is tough. But I really like books.
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I just got an Amazon Kindle, and so far I love it. Embrace change, John!
But can you make photocopies from Kindle or scribble notes in the margins?
I guess digital is ok, if they also sell simple “print on demand” versions, too, which shoudn’t be too hard with modern tech (and since digital is permanent (hopefully), that a book is a published with a little less quality shouldn’t be a big deal, it could just be re-printed).
E-journals are a different story: they are great for doing research, and it is quite viable to print out the articles you really need. Completely abandoning books, on the other hand, is not a clever move. Aesthetics left aside, no current technology can match the usability of the book. I cannot stand reading more than a few pages on any screen, nor can my students. So we end up glimpsing through the text instead of reading it properly. E-books are a great complement to real books, because you can rapidly search the text for something you read. I have used google’s limited preview time and again even on books I wrote because it is so convenient and quicker than going through my files.
I’m ignorant of Kindles, so I wonder what the answer to Doug’s question above is: Does the technology enable one to make marginal notes along the way, as can be done, for example, in .doc files?
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