Thoughts (Pros, Cons) on Using the new Amazon.Com On-Line Reader

I just bought C P Snow's Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959) both as a physical book (I hadn't reread it in ages!) and, for $3.95 or so, as an Amazon On-Line Reader. It didn't always work perfectly, but I like it a lot and will buy this way again.

I bought the book because I have an article due any day now at PMLA on "Technology and the Humanities," and, last week, at the wonderful Californivation event at CalIT2 at UCSD (the last In\Formation Year event by HASTAC), Vijay Samalan, Executive Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, introduced the event with original and fascinating comments about the class-basis for Snow's analysis of science and the humanities. I've heard lots about Snow over the years (including misquoting) but hadn't really thought about class and science and humanities (or about Snow's marginally middle-class origins). So I decided I had better go beyond the oft-quoted lecture by Snow and go back to the book itself.

After purchasing the book on Amazon.Com, I was given the option of also buying it in the form of an On-Line Reader. This allows me to visit the book online any time I want. I can bookmark pages, I can tag and annotate passages, and I can copy the passage I wish to quote and move it right into my PMLA article, complete with the proper citation for the copyrighted material. This process only worked about half of the time and I am waiting for my physical book to arrive so I can double-check quotes that I had to do from memory because the paste feature failed me. I also know that there will be some kind of reading and riffling through pages that will be much easier with the physical book. But I like being able to tag and then go back to my tag and I like the indexical search functions and I like being able to have the book online--my book, my copy---any time I need it. Since I work at home, in my office, in my garden, and on the road, the book is there even when I'm in different places. A cool tool.

I also like this hybrid form of both book publishing and online publishing. I believe authors and publishers should be paid. Pirating gives me the creeps since I'm an author as well as a reader and if we don't support authors, we are all in trouble. I also believe publishers (especially university press publishers) need to be supported. So the extra online fee makes sense. It also breaks the really stupid binary between "electronic publishing" and "book publishing." It isn't a binary at all. It is a different mode of publishing and each form works better for different reasons. Why make it an opposition or (really stupid) why make one be the alternative to the other rather than a different mode of publication that allows different things for different purposes. YouTube doesn't make IMAX obsolete.