The Unprinted Word

Publishers, I'm putting you on notice.  I'm not going to buy anything physical from you ever again.  No books.  No magazines.  No comics.  Don't want em.  We have the Kindle.  We have the Nook.  And soon, we have the iPad.  There is no need for anything to be printed.  I can see everything in color as good as, if not better than, in a printed book.  Print is obsolete.

So here's the deal.  I'm okay with you charging me $15.  Or even $20 for a book.  But we have to have a little quid pro quo here.  Here's my demands:

• Stuff with graphics has to be at a high enough resolution I can zoom in 200% and still get pixel for pixel accuracy.  In other words, the iPad screen ( lets all be realistic, it is the standard ) is 1024x768.  If an image is full page, it better be 2048x1536.  Something like "Sculpting a Galaxy" needs that kind of resolution.
• You aren't allowed to embed advertising that automatically plays audio or takes over the screen.
• I know you think your content is worth a whole lot of money, but with a physical item we're also paying for the paper, the ink, the manufacture, and the transport.  With digital delivery, we aren't.  But if you want me to pay the same for a digital Newsweek as a physical one?  Get rid of all the advertisements.  Wean yourself off of the advertising teat.  Imagine a news magazine that answers to no one but it's readers?  That has the integrity of Consumer Reports?  Amazing.
• Let me send an article to a friend.  Or even loan him an issue.
• Search.  Everything.  Books, magazines, everything.
• You can't use multimedia for the sake of multimedia.  It's not 1993, you're not a CD-ROM.
• Think about what you can do with the media that really takes advantage.  Playboy would be great if I could turn off the pictures, so I can read an article in public.
• Book have to look right on the platform.  If I'm adjusting text size, make sure it flows.  If I change the color of the page, do your graphics still look right?
• Comic book publishers, you need to make your stuff look GOOD.  For new stuff, that's easy.  But for older comics, I want to see restored editions.
• Also, comic book people, just because I can now buy individual issues, don't take away the concept of a trade paperback.

Those are my rules.  Please, look at the mistakes the film, TV, and especially music industries have made by being so slow and hesitant to accept the new reality of media.  I don't want your magazine or book on my reader.  I want the CONTENT on my reader.  Formated to work on it natively.

Embrace, and you will live.  Resist, and, well, there's always old people.

Comments

[Damian Trasler]

Oh boy, I hope they listen. Sometimes it takes far too long for the content to adjust to the full potential of the new medium.