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For the 150th anniversary issue of The Bookseller (the world's oldest publishing trade magazine), the editors commissioned me to write a short-short story about the next 150 years of book sales. The result is called The Right Book, and it's out in the current edition and online as well.
The thing that Arthur liked best about owning his own shop was that he could stock whatever he pleased, and if you didn't like it, you could just shop somewhere else. So there in the window were four ancient Cluedo sets rescued from a car-boot sale in Sussex; a pair of trousers sewn from a salvaged WWII bivouac tent; a small card advertising the availability of artisanal truffles hand made by an autistically gifted chocolatier in Islington; a brick of Pu'er tea that had been made in Guyana by a Chinese family who'd emigrated a full century previous; and, just as of now, six small, handsomely made books.
The books were a first for Arthur. He'd always loved reading the things, but he'd worked at bookshops before opening his own little place in Bow, and he knew the book-trade well enough to stay well away. They were bulky, these books, and low-margin (Low margin? Two-for-three titles actually *lost* money!), and honestly, practically no one read books anymore and what they did read was mostly rubbish. Selling books depressed Arthur.
These little buggers were different, though. He reached into the window -- the shop was so small he could reach it without leaving his stool behind the till -- and plucked one out and handed it to the kid who'd just asked for it. She was about 15, with awkward hair and skin and posture and so on, but the gleam in her eye that said, "Where have you been all my life?" as he handed her the book.
Link to page 1/2,
Link to page 3
Link to text-based version
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I was happily reading this, but when I clicked to continue, it demanded I download a special application. I see. It was my mistake to begin at all ... that's ok ... I'm staying calm ... (wham) that's still ok, that thing has been on my desk too long anyway ...
[...] My Bookseller Magazine story about the future of bookselling: The Right Book (tags: corydoctorow future books retail) [...]
It's unfortunate that to download the book it refused to grant me access because I don't use flash.
It's not free if I can't access it with free software, it's neither libre nor gratis.
Russell, I agree that Flash is suboptimal here, (and they've created a text link), but you CAN in fact access this with FOSS, just use Gnash.
And of course it's gratis, even if it's proprietary. Gratis is gratis. It's just not libre. It doesn't help anyone to assert untrue things like "It's not gratis if it's proprietary." The reason we distinguish between gratis and libre is because something can, in fact, be proprietary without being "free as in speech." If you disagree, then why do you even distinguish between the two?
It's not gratis if I have to pay for software to use it.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9454721484.html
The last reports I heard about Gnash were not positive about it's reliability, and I have never seen anyone claim that it is fully functional (the above page from April says that Gnash 'offers "growing support" for SWF v8 and v9'. The only platform I've used which has had flash working well was Mac OS/X (I haven't tried Windows), I have considered buying a Mac for Flash web sites.
There is a huge range of sorta-gratis things out there. Every company of any reasonable size that sells something seems to offer some sort of bundled deal. Buy X and get Y free. But it's not really gratis.
[...] Cory Doctorow wrote a very good short story for theBookseller titled The story so far . . . and beyond (HT: Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com. [...]
[...] My Bookseller Magazine story about the future of bookselling: The Right Book [...]