THE CRAZY OIKLET 22

SEPTEMBER 2012

Ebooks encore 

Ebooks encore 

  A typical old fart set-up                                        The latest thing

No need to go over that debate again. I’m not a fan but do have a reader with 500 classics on it (free from Gutenberg) – it saves me hitching up a trailer when I drive abroad on holidays. The ebook is certainly here to stay but won’t kill the book just as TV didn’t kill radio or film. One small glitch arises concerning just who owns that downloaded library. Remember Amazon removing the Orwell text from subscribers’ Kindles? Yep - they were entitled. I mention this after reading today of Bruce Willis’s collection of songs on his ipod – reputedly worth $40,000. Bruce is also a singer whose talents in this field equal his accomplishments as an actor. Apple are saying he can’t bequeath them to his kids since he’s only renting them from Apple – they are in fact not his property at all. It's all in the small print - just ask your lawyer. One imagines one’s own vast, bound-book library will finish up in a skip but at least there’d be a choice. An ebook library would simply melt into air. 

Another great feature of the download is being exploited by Nigel Ford’s amazing Worldscribe site. The free taster. Things2read offers new stuff for nowt. Nigel runs a translators’ collective which covers many literatures from Russia to the Arab world (see Oik 14 for an example) so here’s an opportunity to dip your toe in. How many would have stumped up for A Brief History of Time if they could have sampled it this way? How many would have bought WS Burroughs’ Naked Lunch? And just think what you’d save if you’d sampled Fifty Shades of Shite in this manner. Cop Nigel’s offer below.

DO YOU LOVE INNOVATIVE LITERATURE? 

Join THING2READ!  The e-book club started by WORLDSCRIBE, an organization of like-thinking publishers, translators and writers devoted to the spread of avant garde, experimental and innovative literature worldwide. 

We send your first book free. If you like what you read and want to subscribe we ask you to pay a low fee* for a year’s subscription and send you a new book monthly for the price of a coffee. 

Send an e-mail to info@worldscribe.nu and write “Thing2Read” in the subject line. We’ll send you an e-book and more information by return. 

*Subscription fees and book prices are set according to income per capita in your country and as low as possible. 

MORE INFORMATION:

Books are available in hard copy versions from the Worldscribe Book Shop at www.worldscribe.nu

E-books and hard copy books are available in both the original language and your language of choice.

Payment by PayPal in your currency of choice.

Profits go to translating, publishing and administration expenses. Both Thing2Read and Worldscribe are essentially voluntary projects and rely heavily on grants, contributions and voluntary assistance.

Worldscribe was started in October 2011

Worldscribe publish novels, short novels (nouvella), plays, poetry, essays and short stories.

Worldscribe plays are available for use by cultural organisations  (theatre and performance groups, arts centres etc.) for a modest fee.

It is our firm conviction that translating and publishing innovative literature worldwide makes a significant contribution to human rights. 

At the time of writing Worldscribe comprises 66 translators, 8 publishers, 14 writers and are translating into 18 languages.  This year we hope to multiply these figures considerably.

And while we're on the topic Tom Kilcourse reports that his early collection of stories The Human Circus (quite a few of which have appeared in the Oik) are now in ebook format in both Apple and others:

First Apple: