The future of paper-based books

I finally got around to reading the July, 2008, issue of the Independent Book Publisher’s Association newsletter (Carol is a member of IBPA), and read about the Espresso Book Machine, which “starts with a PDF and 15 minutes later produces a finished bound book.” You can buy one from On Demand Books to put into your bookstore or print shop — for about $50K, which is so expensive you’re unlikely to see one in your home town next week.

But I’ll bet the price is going to come down quickly, and I’ll bet that there’s going to be an ongoing demand for paper-based books for quite some time. So here are four possible scenarios: (1) Libraries will start installing one of these next to the copy machines, allowing library patrons to produce paper-based copies of books in the public domain. (2) Bookstores will install these, and they’ll get especially heavy use at author signings, so you can get your favorite author to sign his or her out-of-print books. (3) Colleges and universities will install these, allowing their professors to assign out-of-print books to students, and allowing easier publication of dissertations. (4) A few big megachurches will install these machines, allowing them to print out the latest inspirational tome by their senior pastor, as well as the church cookbook.

So — those of you who are writers, readers, librarians, professors, and ministers — do you think there is a bright future for printing on-demand bound books on-site?

At Arisia: whither short fiction and magazines?

I had to leave Arisia around three this afternoon, because tomorrow is a work day. I attended one particularly thought-provoking panel discussion, “the Changing Face of SF/F Magazines,” on the future of future of paper-based magazines. The panelists included two publishers, one of whom publishes online and the other of whom publishes on paper, and two authors. All the panelists agreed that it’s becoming more difficult, financially speaking, to publish a magazine devoted to short fiction — costs of paper, printing, and distribution keep going up. The consensus among the panelists was that eventually we’re going to see paper-based magazines die out in favor of some sort of Internet-based printing and distribution system.

But the panelists reached no consensus as to what is going to replace paper-based magazines. You can find Web-based science fiction magazines, but they typically don’t have enough money to pay authors well (or at all). There are authors, like the writers’ cabal behind Shadow Unit, who self-publish some of their work online and solicit donations. The panelists agreed that authors now have to worry about “branding” themselves; readers don’t just buy a work of fiction, they tend to buy an author’s “brand.” But no one was willing to predict the future of fiction periodicals; and all the panelists agreed that it was going to become harder to earn a living by writing short fiction.

The discussion broadened beyond paper-based magazines, and turned to books:– paper-based books are facing the same economic realities as paper-based magazines. There was more consensus about the direction books are going in:– books are now being published in multiple formats (e-books, other downloadable files, print-on-demand, and traditional books), and that trend will continue. But the situation is still very much in flux, and no one knows quite how it’s going to turn out.

I wonder if the monks who were scribes had these kinds of conversations among themselves when Gutenberg started printing books on his printing press.

At Arisia

Liveblogging from a science fiction convention

Richard Stallman was a member of a panel discussion called “Copyright: Theory and Practice Today and Tomorrow.” I have never seen him in person before. He is extremely articulate and plays with his long hair when he is not speaking. He said: “Never use a product with DRM [Digital Rights Management] unless — you know how to break the DRM.”

At the same panel discussion, a librarian stood up to speak about orphaned works, that is, works which are covered under copyright law but where the copyright owner can no longer be found. “Librarians want to make orphaned works available,” she said. Librarians, she claimed, want to reach as wide an audience as possible, but under current copyright law it is illegal for them to digitize orphaned works; this limits how libraries can make information available to the people they are trying to serve. She wore a costume that you might see in an 18th C. historical re-enactment: white blouse, bodice, full skirt.

This is one of those conventions where people wear costumes. Earlier, I saw a woman wearing leopard-skin-pattern cloth over most of her body, a wide black belt, and an orange cape passing by a man in black leather pants and a black leather coat and a fuzzy red lobster hat. Just now, a woman walked by wearing a very short latex miniskirt. Now a man just walked by wearing a large grey tri-cornered hat, and a colorful quilt as a cape.

The film series here at Arisia has been excellent so far. Highlights this evening: Our Man Flint, a 1966 parody of the old James Bond films, which is subtler and much funnier than the Austin Powers franchise. We saw it in a 35 mm print that was in poor condition; but even in poor condition, I still prefer film to digital video. Also fascinating was a six-minute film in 16 mm called “Heave Away.” It looked like an amateur film, with bizarre footage of the decommissioning of a NASA spacecraft; the soundtrack was a recording of a sea shanty performed by obscure folk singer Helva Peters. This film represents what people did before YouTube videos. And later this evening, they’ll be showing a new print of Metropolis, with live organ music.

Carol just arrived. “This is fantastic,” she said. This means: Boy, there is unbelievably good people-watching here.

“This confused war has played havoc with our domestic destinies.”

Martin Luther King would have been 80 today. On February 25, 1967, not long before he was killed, he spoke about the Vietnam War and its effects on our country. The following excerpt from that speech could easily be delivered today, with just a few minor changes:

“This confused war has played havoc with our domestic destinies.

“Despite feeble protestations to the contrary, the promises of the Great Society [anti-poverty program] have been shot down on the battlefield of Viet Nam. The pursuit of this widened war has narrowed domestic welfare programs, making the poor, white and Negro, bear the heaviest burdens both at the front and at home.

“While the anti-poverty program is cautiously initiated, zealously supervised and evaluated for immediate results, billions are liberally expended for this ill-considered war. The recently revealed mis-estimate of the war budget amounts to ten billions of dollars for a single year. This error alone is more than five times the amount committed to anti-poverty programs. The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in Viet Nam explode at home: they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

“If we reversed investments and gave the armed forces the antipoverty budget, the generals could be forgiven if they walked off the battlefield in disgust.

“Poverty, urban problems and social progress generally are ignored when the guns of war become a national obsession. When it is not our security that is at stake, but questionable and vague commitments to reactionary regimes, values disintegrate into foolish and adolescent slogans.”

Full text of the speech on Stanford’s Web site. Crossposted on PaxPac.

Spend money. Help people.

Doug Muder, who is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Lay Theological Education Task Force (UULTE) wants to ask you a question about how to spend a big chunk of money. Doug writes:

I’m a member of the Unitarian Universalist Lay Theological Education Task Force (UULTE). We’re supposed to figure out what to do with half the money that was collected for Association Sunday — the half earmarked for “lay theological education.” I’m asking for your blog’s help in starting a discussion about what needs “lay theological education” ought to satisfy. The UULTE task force is soliciting proposals from various organizations, and I’m sure we’ll get plans for a lot of good stuff. (Curricula, new resources, online infrastructure, and so on.) But will we get the stuff that Unitarian Universalists need? If we get it, will we recognize it?

What I’m hoping to see is a lot of testimony by and discussion about individual Unitarian Universalists who find themselves at a plateau. They’re happy with Unitarian Universalism as far as it goes and as far as they understand it, but they feel a call to go deeper and they don’t know how to answer it. Maybe they’ve been trying to answer by doing more: joining committees, starting projects, and so on. But outer work at some point needs to be balanced with some inner work. And how do you do Unitarian Universalist inner work? Or how do you make the leap from being a Unitarian Universalist fellow traveler to feeling like you are really part of the UU tradition?

There are bunch of ideas to disentangle here. Some people talk about “education.” Some talk about “faith development” or “spiritual maturity” or “finding a Unitarian Universalist identity.” I encourage you not to get hung up on words and labels. Think about that person at a plateau: What does s/he need that the community could offer?

In the discussions the task force has had among ourselves, we talk a lot about the gap between the kinds of adult education you’d find at a typical Unitarian Universalist church, and the far more arduous program of a divinity school. What could we offer the person who wants to go deeper, but can’t take years out of his/her life and spend tens of thousands of dollars? That’s the “lay” part of “lay theological education.” You shouldn’t have to become a minister to find yourself as a Unitarian Universalist.

Anyway, you’d be doing me a favor — and helping the Unitarian Universalist Association get insight — if you’d raise these issues on your blog.

Thank you, Doug, for raising these issues, and asking for our responses. A fair number of my readers are not Unitarian Universalists, but I think they should feel free to comment, too.

Online peace witness?

Will Shetterly is talking about creating a peace group online. Will just floated this idea today, so it’s still a pretty malleable project. Read his blog post, and if you want you can sign on in comments.

This crazy war in Iraq and Afghanistan has begun to really gnaw at me, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to take action. I’m planning to go down to Washington to participate in the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq’s worship and witness event April 29-30. I’ve been considering heading down to the Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership’s Washington celebration of MLK on January 19 (hey, E, can I stay at your place if I come down?)

But I’m not sure worship and witness is enough. So I told Will I’d help him out with his online peace project.

What about you? What do you think might be an effective way to bring pressure to bear on Washington to end the Iraq/Afghanistan war — and go beyond that to truly promote peace in the world? Street demonstrations seem outdated, but will Web 2.0 movements be enough? What do you think?

Boston DOMA protest

Two of us from First Unitarian in New Bedford drove up to Boston today to attend the demonstration opposing the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” or DOMA (info about the demonstration here). It was cold — I saw one thermometer over a bank that read sixteen degrees. The cold kept a lot of people away — I would estimate that less than a thousand people showed up for this demonstration.

There may only have been a thousand of us, but we were enthusiastic, not least because you stay wormer when you’re enthusiastic. Just a few politicians braved the cold: Barney Frank, congressman from our district; Tom Menino, mayor of Boston; Denise Simmons, mayor of Cambridge. After Barney Frank spoke, the two of us from New Bedford made sure to say hello to him, and tell him we voted for him. He even posed for a picture:

Jean Kellaway and Barney Frank at the DOMA protest

That’s Jean K. posing with Barney Frank. Frank and several of the other speakers reminded us that now is a good time to start writing to your representatives and senators, telling them that we want DOMA repealed (heck, even the conservative legislator who wrote DOMA now wants it repealed). With a new president and a new congress, we have a much better chance of getting equal marriage rights over the next two years, but they do need to hear from you, their constituents.

Here’s one more photo, showing us walking through downtown Boston past King’s Chapel, one of the Unitarian Universalist churches in Boston:

Boston DOMA protest walking by King's Chapel

Finally, I note the following: I didn’t see any other Unitarian Universalist ministers or laypeople at this demonstration, but there was someone from the Boston Metropolitan Community Church handing out refrigerator magnets advertising their church.