[bksvol-discuss] Re: Bookshare's Purpose in Your Eyes
- From: "Sarah Van Oosterwijck" <curiousentity@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 17:13:06 -0500
Great explanation. I too may download books I don't end up reading,
especially when there isn't much information to go on when deciding if it
will be appealing to me.
I am also not a book buyer, since I hate rereading most books. I think I
probably reread less than 0.1 percent of books, and then it is likely to be
only a small part of the book for reference. I know plenty of sighted
people who have the same habits in regard to reading, so a library sutes
them the best. Sometimes I will buy a book if it isn't expensive and is
part of a series I know I like. When I am done with the book I may keep it
arround to supply something for others to read when they visit. If I bought
more books I would sell them when I was done with them.
I couldn't do that with an electronic copy of a book when I finished reading
it. I also could not buy used copies of electronic books. They just can't
be considered equal, which means sometimes they are better and sometimes
worse. Blindness is not fair, and that inequality goes both ways.
I think bookshare is a library and a bookstore, at least for now.
I think it would be good if the system could charge for books that are kept
and not charge for books that are read only once. That would be hard to set
up and control though.
I know there are audio files that can expire after a certain time limit, and
that would suit me fine for books. My dream would be that you could
download a book to read it, for, let say, 30 days, and if you wished to read
it after that you would need to pay something for keeping the book. If you
wished you could pay a slightly higher price, like the price of the print
edition, to keep it as your own for as long as you had the technology to
keep and read it.
I'm not saying that would be possible, but that would be nice. Of course a
non-profit organization might find more issues with that than just the
technical means to create such a system.
I'd like to pay authors for their work, but I couldn't aford to pay 7
dollars for every 250 pages I read. I wouldn't mind a small fee for the
rent of the book though.
Sarah Van Oosterwijck
curious entity at earthlink dot net
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Otten" <maryotten@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2004 1:18 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Bookshare's Purpose in Your Eyes
> Hi Donna,
> Just one other thing on the topic of the 100 books a month. I don't know
about you. But I know I download books I'll probably never read, and
certainly wouldn't pay for without knowing more about them. first, I might
> start reading and discover that the book has too many errors in it, making
it a pain. So I either delete and forget, or delete and if its one I really
want, find a copy and scan for myself. Second, because of the way
> Bookshare is organized, I try to keep current with the new submissions,
downloading any that I see that I think might possibly be of interest to me
at some point, knowing that, if I don't download it from new books, I'll
> either have to make a note of its existence for later, or I'll probably
forget about it. I may never read the book. So publishers shouldn't equate
download statistics with book sales lost. Rather, a download is the
> equivalent to a sighted person stopping in a bookstore and rifling
through a book. Maybe they decide to buy and read; maybe they don't. Or
maybe they go to the public library and borrow the book to read. For the
> great majority of books that I have, I would say that I will not read them
again. the fact that I can keep them after reading, rather than returning
them to the library is just a bi-product of the way in which they were made
> accessible.
> Mary
>
>
>
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