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Dan asked us to provide constructive criticism, so here are my beliefs.
Dan should tone down the hyperbole. His post was not helpful in the goal of increasing subscriptions to Popular Woodworking eBooks. I found it bit silly and not in line with the generally high quality of Popular Woodworking’s staff.
Knowledge is not permanent. What “you remember from everything you have read and done” today fades with time. If Pop Wood goes away, so will the online content. The printed books, magazines and plans will remain.
I like online access to all the material, but don’t oversell it and treat us like we are children.
My curreny library of woodworking books is 308 books strong. I have read each of these books at least once and some more. Many have at one time or another spent a significant time in my workshop, usually on the workbench opened to a specific subject. They have been invaluable to me in learning woodworking skills. But most of all, and not to be taken lightly, is that these books give the gift of each authors knowledge and I will pass them and that knoeledge on to my children, grandchildren and a local woodworking school that has also earned its place in our woodworking society. Ebooks are for epeople, printed books are for tactile creative caring people such as woodworkers, printers and bookbinders!
I’m probably being blind again, but in the entirety of the e-book site available to non-subscribers nowhere is the subscription price shown. Pushing subscribe without knowing the price seems rather foolish to me.
” in terms of community, what you lose in being able to hand a printed book or magazine to someone else, you gain in being able to travel with a larger set of information.”
I am sorry but this is a straw argument. Unless you are in the business of teaching and traveling like many of you in the magazine do, this is a useless feature. While I agree that the manner in which one acquires knowledge is unimportant. For some of us, the feel and connection that is established when using a book is irreplaceable by a reading pad. As stated above, with a book I do not have to worry if it gets wet, dusty or if it falls from the workbench. I can put it down, do something and go back to where I stopped reading, I don’t have to “turn it on”.
The subject of reading tablets is just like dovetails and how to cut them or sharpening systems, there are intangible preferences. Both roads take us to the same place but one is like driving through a beautiful road in a convertible, the other one is like taking the subway…. 🙂
Having access to stuff on a tablet is great. I have a 10″ tablet that turns out to be great for shop manuals (I fixed my motorcycle using a shop manual downloaded on that tablet). I’m perfectly happy to read on a tablet, but I need access when I’m offline. A tablet is great for letting me take a woodworking book or three camping with me. But there’s no reason to assume that I’ll have an internet connection. Make the books downloadable in a non-restricted, open format, so I can read it on whatever device I choose, without a special Pop Wood app, and I’ll be happy to subscribe. Until then, I think your ebooks are a distraction from your real business.
Steve Jackson Games gets it. They’re the model for how you should run a successful, customer-friendly electronic publishing business. Study them, and stop wasting time and effort with ebooks until you work out why they’re successful. Paizo publishing is another excellent example.
Having worked in Wall St for over 50 years I lived on a terminal or PC every day.
But when it comes to down time I want a book I can pick up, and if I take it in the shop no fear
of sawdust or fear of dropping it.
The tactile feel is still it for me.