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Wednesday, May 6, 2009
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About
Commentary on technologies of reading, writing, research, and, generally, knowledge. As these technologies change and develop, what do we lose, what do we gain, what is (fundamentally or trivially) altered? And, not least, what's fun?
Alan Jacobs
Alan Jacobs is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program of Baylor University and the author, most recently, of How to Think and The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography. His homepage is here.

Sites of Interest

How to Read Well in an Age of Distraction
Watch video of Alan Jacobs discussing his book in a Washington, D.C. lecture in June 2011.

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Oh, he left out a bunch of other considerations. My decision tree includes:
Is the text graphic-heavy (charts, tables, maps, illustrations) - if so, hard copy.
Is the book part of a series of which I already own some volumes in hard copy - if so, probably hard copy;
Am I likely to read the book (either first time through or later as reference) dipping in-and-out or cross-referring by flipping through the volume, or is it a book that I'll read front-to-back or in the future look for text by index or keyword search. If the latter, e-book.
Is the book available in trade paperback (my heavily preferred hard-copy format) and if so, what's the pricing differential. That's not a sharp decision-point, just an element to go into the mix.
If the over-sized Kindle they're supposedly bringing out this week can handle graphics displays better, my buying patterns might shift when I eventually upgrade to a later-version Kindle.
Anyhow, what this exercise shows is why I'd hate to be an amazon manager who has to figure out pricing points and then negotiate the deals with each individual publisher, who probably have their own idiosyncratic views as to how to position their products to avoid cannibalization and maximize revenue.
It's always a good Text Patterns day when nadezhda leaves a comment. Agreed on all points. Your first three criteria are especially important ones for me as well.