Re: Electronic publishing (am I alone?)

From: Todd Gardiner <todd.gardiner_at_myYpCQTjym9hktLl886-GCjSOPG1bl2ENER1r8VQwdgkh_Sk4DjWO5GHmwwPlG>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:29:51 -0700

Yes, I'm going to miss my horse, Hidalgo, when I give in to popular demand and buy one of those new fangled automobiles. But I know that a car, as they call them, just won't give me the companionship and appreciation that my horse does.
A horse matures. Learns what you need from her, ages gracefully and rarely has a sudden situation in which she won't work and you don't know why. Cars on the other hand don't remind you to feed or water them, don't understand your particular needs or cues. And ultimately they suddenly go from working to not working, with little or no warning.

But the transportation network is just making it harder to use a horse: you can't find stables as readily, for instance. And the car does have many advantages over horses, at least for their specific use as transportation. Not to mention that it is increasingly dangerous to ride your horse on a busy motorway!

(All fun aside for the moment. I too have a beloved copy of RQ2 on my bookshelf. And I enjoy re-reading copies of Reaching Moon as I lay in bed waiting for sleep to take me. And there are lots of benefits to having a hard copy. But that distribution model, even as a fanzine, does not stand up to the production and distribution costs of the PDF model. I view the change as inevitable.)

--Todd

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Dan Ross <justrabbits_at_ZHH8opomcgSyVhGIc7lzIbXVpCrBRwbsQUd12zBsHsTq-33TDo5B898jEGxLdnKrmWA9YrhJsxwNHyG_ag.yahoo.invalid> wrote:

> Books have a tactile component lacking in electronic versions, one
> suited to intimate browsing. My heart still leaps when I see an old print
> copy of Runequest 2 (that's THE one I played as a kid!) while it remains
> unmoved by a PDF. Greg signed some of my books. Others have notes in the
> margins by previous owners, with clever character twists. The medium is part
> of the message.
>
> Total pleasure time I've spent reading my hundreds of game files: zero.
> Total pleasure time spent reading RPG books: please, don't make my wife
> angry.
>

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