3 ms·

I wonder what was the impact of the internet making it easy for everyone to just put together a website and dump their content in it. I'm not even considering

I wonder what was the impact of the internet making it easy for everyone to just put together a website and dump their content in it. I'm not even considering self-publishing services. Just buying a domain, pay a hosting company to host your site, and make it available for everyone. I've been stumbling upon a few sites that follow the "book as a site" pattern. Some provide a free tier along with a premium access, which sometimes includes additional services. Why would anyone go through the trouble and cost of printing out a book if putting up a website costs pennies?

jdietrich 3y ago
>Why would anyone go through the trouble and cost of printing out a book if putting up a website costs pennies? The number of people who want to be able to call themselves a published author is far greater than the number of people who actually want to write a book for the sake of it being read.
strogonoff 3y ago
The existence of digital & the Internet doesn’t stop people from printing books, photos or making other things IRL because physical artifacts matter. I like to be able to read a physical book, to lend or gift it later, to keep it on a shelf as a visual reminder about something, etc.; incidentally, seeing someone in the wild reading a book I know is awesome (even when it’s not used to start a conversation). I don’t write books but I like to see my own photos printed (and buy others’ photobooks) for a similar reason. It’s less expensive to not print, but then it’s less expensive to not buy the camera in the first place, and at the extreme to not live at all I suppose. The general answer to the question “why do people still print books when we have Web?” is “same reason do people do things anyway”. *** Another answer (that applies in a narrower range of cases) is that sometimes you don’t want to make your art available to everyone. If you have a physical object, you can control its distribution for a while, you give it to friends who want it and appreciate your art and you feel good about it. Whereas once it’s out there on the Web, your work goes fully outside of your control. What uses will they put it to? The only thing you can be sure about these days is that it would be scraped and acquired for ML training purposes (and that is, again, far from what every original author would desire, believe it or not).
raadore 3y ago
Would you mind sharing a few sites, I’m interested. Thx.

jdietrich 3y ago

>Why would anyone go through the trouble and cost of printing out a book if putting up a website costs pennies? The number of people who want to be able to call themselves a published author is far greater than the number of people who actually want to write a book for the sake of it being read.

strogonoff 3y ago

The existence of digital & the Internet doesn’t stop people from printing books, photos or making other things IRL because physical artifacts matter. I like to be able to read a physical book, to lend or gift it later, to keep it on a shelf as a visual reminder about something, etc.; incidentally, seeing someone in the wild reading a book I know is awesome (even when it’s not used to start a conversation). I don’t write books but I like to see my own photos printed (and buy others’ photobooks) for a similar reason. It’s less expensive to not print, but then it’s less expensive to not buy the camera in the first place, and at the extreme to not live at all I suppose. The general answer to the question “why do people still print books when we have Web?” is “same reason do people do things anyway”. *** Another answer (that applies in a narrower range of cases) is that sometimes you don’t want to make your art available to everyone. If you have a physical object, you can control its distribution for a while, you give it to friends who want it and appreciate your art and you feel good about it. Whereas once it’s out there on the Web, your work goes fully outside of your control. What uses will they put it to? The only thing you can be sure about these days is that it would be scraped and acquired for ML training purposes (and that is, again, far from what every original author would desire, believe it or not).

raadore 3y ago

Would you mind sharing a few sites, I’m interested. Thx.