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Fall 2010 DB Newsletter

Contains a note from our publisher, Cthulhurotica facts and art, an overview of archeology, some possible inspirations for IN SITU, and more.

The truth is that eBooks are a growing part of the publishing world. There may not yet be a universal term for them (electronic books, e-pubs, digital books, digitexts, e-books or ebooks are all used) but their appeal is universal. A Barnes&Noble nook, for example, boasts that it can hold 1500 electronic texts. There is no way that 1500 books are going to fit into a beach bag or airplane carry-on. Sure, most humans don’t have the ability to read over a thousand novels during the course of even a Trans-Atlantic flight, but a thin reader is going to take up far less space than the two or three paperbacks that many people do travel with. There’s also the price to consider: the lower price of digital versions of your To-Read pile may make up for the initial cost of a reader. Just as some people have a collectible hardcover of their favorite title as well as a paperback version for repeat reading, even a die-hard bibliophile has to admit the usefulness of an eBook for the same purpose.

There is also the ease in which a very small book publisher can produce a quality eBook, and make it available for sale to a readership that may not be able to access the print version of the same title.

Dagan Books loves books, but more importantly we love that people read books. If eBooks are becoming the dominant way to ensure that books will always have readers, then we will make sure that eBooks are available.

Printed books have allowed us to record human history and knowledge in a format that resists death and disease, survives traumatic brain injuries, can be passed on (without revisions) to others, can be shared with readers in another city, state, or country from the author, and can be reliably reproduced. Print materials took knowledge from the mouths of oral historians and rote teachers and made it available to the eyes and minds of students from any religion or social class. While the digital format of electronic “books” allows for instant dissemination of material, that information lacks the solid characteristics of a printed volume: digital information must be fed electricity to stay alive, it cannot survive under conditions that might damage but not destroy a book, and it no longer includes the right of ownership which the purchase of a physical text represents. A digital text can be altered online, and those changes can filter down through all the derivations of that work, while a physical book can only be reprinted with “corrections” – it cannot be retroactively edited. A digital text can be rescinded from all readers simultaneously, while a printed text represents knowledge that can only be stolen from individuals, never from all readers at once. A book remains, solid and sure, where a electronic body is ephemeral and impossible to hold.

Dagan Books remains committed to the promotion of both technologies, print and digital.