E-book readers' bill of rights

 This awesome post has been bouncing around the internet, where I saw it on Andy Woodworth's blog and Sarah Houghton-Jan's blog. For those who aren't aware, discussions about e-books have been taking place after Harper-Collins' announcement that they would be limiting e-book circulation at libraries to 26 uses. This causes tons of problems for access, and while I understand publishers need to make money to continue functioning, my main concern is for library patrons, readers (including students) and for authors.
LIS students--this is a must-read and the topic is one we should all follow. If for no other reason, as a patron who wants to read e-books or even share a book with another student, you want to know that you can use those texts. I have seen a number of people say that e-books are not paper books, and that we need a new set of rules to deal with them. Maybe, but whether or not the suggestions they make are the be all and end all, they are an awesome start because they deal with access and with getting books to readers: the purpose for which they were written in the first place. Since digital books open up the potential for even greater access and sharing because they can be copied almost instantly and without the overhead and resources necessary to create print books. I'm keeping my eyes peeled to see what happens.
I've included the text of the original post below: the authors have graciously made it a public domain work so that you can alter it to add your own insights about user rights you would like to see.


The eBook User’s Bill of Rights

Every eBook user should have the following rights:

• the right to use eBooks under guidelines that favor access over proprietary limitations
• the right to access eBooks on any technological platform, including the hardware and software the user chooses
• the right to annotate, quote passages, print, and share eBook content within the spirit of fair use and copyright
• the right of the first-sale doctrine extended to digital content, allowing the eBook owner the right to retain, archive, share, and re-sell purchased eBooks

I believe in the free market of information and ideas.
I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can flourish when their works are readily available on the widest range of media. I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can thrive when readers are given the maximum amount of freedom to access, annotate, and share with other readers, helping this content find new audiences and markets. I believe that eBook purchasers should enjoy the rights of the first-sale doctrine because eBooks are part of the greater cultural cornerstone of literacy, education, and information access.
Digital Rights Management (DRM), like a tariff, acts as a mechanism to inhibit this free exchange of ideas, literature, and information. Likewise, the current licensing arrangements mean that readers never possess ultimate control over their own personal reading material. These are not acceptable conditions for eBooks.
I am a reader. As a customer, I am entitled to be treated with respect and not as a potential criminal. As a consumer, I am entitled to make my own decisions about the eBooks that I buy or borrow.
I am concerned about the future of access to literature and information in eBooks.  I ask readers, authors, publishers, retailers, librarians, software developers, and device manufacturers to support these eBook users’ rights.
These rights are yours.  Now it is your turn to take a stand.  To help spread the word, copy this entire post, add your own comments, remix it, and distribute it to others.  Blog it, Tweet it (#ebookrights), Facebook it, email it, and post it on a telephone pole.

 
To the extent possible under law, the person who associated CC0 with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

Circular Texts, both Digital and Tangible

If you remember my post on readers and new media from a couple weeks ago, I mentioned this article on an author (Jurgen Neffe) who took advantage of the e-reader format to create circular texts, or ones without a beginning or end. A quick internet search on the author revealed this article entitled "The disembodied book," which is a pretty thorough discussion of the author's views on the future of the book and authorship, and the future of reading. He is optimistic about the possibility of more authors being recognized and readers interacting with texts in new ways, although he frames this within the downfall of the print book. I'm one of those folks that feels like we don't have to choose: I have a Kindle e-reader but still read paper texts as well. However, he doesn't associate the reduction of print books to their complete elimination, which is an argument I feel has been made far too many times (insert frantic 'print is dying! We will never read printed books again!' comments here).
The book is not going anywhere, and I think Jurgen has a valid point by reminding us of that, but also reminding us that game changing technologies do indeed have far-reaching effects. People will read more e-books, and multimedia books will allow people to interact with texts in far more ways than before (you can even publish your own multimedia books). My friends who are bookstore owners can attest to the fact that their shops are struggling (which is why I will use this moment to remind you to buy your books from locally owned bookshops--they really are so much better than the big sellers both in terms of unique selection and service), but I just can't imagine that their shops are all going to disappear under a tidal wave of digital books. People still like print books, but also see the opportunities extant in the digital format (I, for example, plan on self-publishing my library research to the Kindle store, for e-readers, and to Lulu, for tangible books).
With this books/no books argument swirling in my head, I decided to take my assignment from my calligraphy instructor for last week (which was to create and calligraph a book) and play around with Jurgen's notions of a circular text in book format. I found a blog with a number of circular poems, although most of them weren't suitable to my book because I didn't feel they were 'circular' enough for my needs. The idea behind such a poem is, like a circular book, that you can begin from anywhere within the poem because it lacks a clear beginning and end.
For this first book I used 'Where are the Extravagant Spectacles of Yesterday?' because I could not resist the name, but also because it seems very circular. I folded some thick watercolor paper for pages, using only one folio (or piece of paper, for non-binders) per signature (set of page(s), usually a book with have multiple signatures bound together). Using three jewelry findings (in this case little silver loops), I created a series of chain stitched pamphlet bindings, and move them through the loops as I progressed. I'm pleased my little experiment worked, and resulted in a book that can lay flat, but that can stand up and turn into a 'circular text' by distributing the pages around the loops in such a way that it's actually a bit hard to figure out where the book starts and ends.

I'm making another circular book for class this week, using the poem 'Upon the Winds of Time' from that same site. I'll post photos after it's finished!

What New Media Means for Me as a Reader

I am about to make the most obvious statement ever: there is a lot of cool stuff happening on the internet.
Not a groundbreaking observation by any means, but I am ceaselessly amazed by the sheer number of new ways to participate in the world as a reader of texts. I mean this both in the literal sense (e-texts versus paper texts), and also in how we interpret those texts (and how technology influences that).

Take, for example, this article on 'circular reading.' This author has found a way to exploit the e-reader technology in a way that gives us stories with a circular narrative (no beginning or end). As readers of these stories, how does this sort of narrative change our interpretation of the text, and how does it change our interaction with that text? There are many books that challenge us to think of narrative form differently than a 'beginning-to-end' reading experience (I was fond of the 'choose your own adventure' book when I was a kid), and this book takes that to a new level by using a technology that isn't bounded by a structure with a clear beginning and end.
The e-reader is especially interesting to me after I purchased a Kindle (which arrived in the mail today!) and began exploring the different texts I could fill it up with. There is a dizzying array of public domain material available for free in the Kindle Store, and right now that's what I'm experimenting with. I've downloaded one free comic book, and a number of books (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) so I can get a sense for how the different texts 'read' on this device. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could read the comic fine (it just shows each page as a 'page' on the Kindle, like you would expect), but as a comics reader I wonder what happens when you take comics that include elements of color or 'splash pages' (where the narrative and imagery spans two pages). I haven't found answers to these questions yet, but I might just download Watchmen on there to see how it changes my reading experience (and my understanding of the text).
I'm also curious about subscription services. I love having a 3G device that will automatically update my blogs and allow me to read them while on layovers at bus stops (which is when I get to read at work--can't do it while driving!) or while at the doctor's office without hauling my MacBook Pro along for the ride. I looked at some newspaper subscriptions, although I just can't commit: I'm someone that reads snippets throughout the day from various sources and listens to NPR, so sitting down 'with the paper' isn't a model I'll probably adopt. Blogs, however, are a different story. I have a 'to read' list that's probably about 100 posts long at any given point, so I'll take all the help I can get!
The Kindle is interesting because you pay for a blog subscription at a price that is comparable to that of newspapers, which shows our increasing acceptance of the blog as a source for reputable information (or at least, with the potential to be such a source). Tonight, I've listed this blog on the Kindle Store, and it should be available for purchase in about 48 hours (I'll share a link when it is). I'll also be listing my other blog that I'm using for my Center for the Book final project (more on that later--but suffice to say there's some exciting stuff in the works!)
This model of publishing is similar to someplace like Lulu.com: it's free to sign up and to upload your material to be published, and you get a decent hunk of the royalties when it is. With the Kindle subscription, I was surprised by the fact that I wasn't given the option to choose the price (although it's possible that I will be able to do so after it's 'approved). I want to make my blog accessible to as many people as possible, so I would like to list it for free! While the jury's still out on this, I definitely think that taking that agency away from the author has some very interesting implications. For example, how does it compare to traditional publishing models' valuing of work? What does it say for access--if Amazon.com is choosing the price of my blog, what will that do to people who want to access the work but can't? This is less of an issue for people who own Kindles (I assume that most people who buy them are prepared to spend 99 cents on a blog subscription), but it does raise questions for me about e-publishing at large.
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Well, it's the next day, and both blogs have been published for the Kindle. You can find this blog here, and my other blog here. I'm excited to have them on the Kindle because I want to be able to share them with as many people as possible. As I suspected, I didn't get to choose the price: they're each $1.99. I am actually not super happy about that price, because I wanted to give them away for free (or at least for less than $1). However, I am happy to have another way to share my work with others, and I would love to hear from Kindle users about their experiences reading my blog(s) in that format!