As we all know, different media have different advantages and disadvantages. In particular, the advantages of ebooks include: essentially no weight and space, possible lower price, possible dynamic viewing (if the file format allows it). The disadvantages include: easier piracy, possibly missing access to the contents (if a company, the hardware or DRM fail), difficult backup (if the operating system and the program let it be difficult), prohibited use with other hard- or software (if the file format is proprietary).

Quotation reference:
viewtopic.php?p=158609#p158609


Sure, but you cannot deny that similar softwares for other OSs do not exist yet and it is unclear when or if they will exist. (I am not sure if Anders allows such use of the file format.)

Quotation reference:
viewtopic.php?p=158610#p158610


No, because there is no "prevalence of piracy" within the go community. There is a small percentage of pirats; presumably pretty much the same people that would copy printed books or decrypt encrypted file formats. As I can tell from experience, releasing commercial go book files in an open format works well, provided it is clear enough that indeed the media are commercial and protected by copyright. As Peter Zandveld, who leaves many books in his shop at tournaments unobserved for most of the time incl. the nights, says: go players can be trusted, because illegal behaviour does not pay off in the long run in the small go community.

Robert, your analysis of the situation is very limited, and probably biased.

Among the factors you omit is the nature of the e-market. E.g. It may be that users of one platform are willing to pay higher prices (Mac over Windows, Windows over Linux, perhaps). Or it may be that one operating system has a much higher client base. Publishers and authors consider these factors, however imperfectly.

Second, there is the nature of the book. A book aimed at beginners will always sell much better than a harder book. That effects sales prospects enormously, which feeds into choice of format.

Third, making a book available in multiple formats can damage prospects in one sector. E.g. publishing an e-book can make a paper form unprofitable, and vice versa.

Fourth, but most important in my particular case, certain formats are much easier to use for the author. If I had not had Bill Cobb to do the work of making diagrams, my books with him would not have seen the light of day. Similarly, what swings SmartGo for me is that it produces diagrams and other formatting automatically. It must be added that working with the likes of Bill and Anders is also a great attraction.

Even despite the diagramming work saved, getting an e-book ready for publication is still a lot of work. I have been through the grind with both Kindle and SmartGo. The latter in particular has quite a steep learning curve and the specs keep changing. In the case of the Kindle the software I used was decommissioned and stopped working, so I gave up.

I have different views from you on piracy and trust, but then I know publishers who have had different experiences.

My own experience tells me that the biggest single problem in go publishing is not which format to use but advertising. The lack of book reviews (paper or online) and fewer book stalls at tournaments shows the general western go public doesn't care too much about books. That may reflect another possible problem? Are they sated? Are there too many books?

In the end, though, argument is sterile. Publishers and authors will make their own decisions.

John, if you don't mind my asking, how do sales of your books compare between smartgo, amazon/kindle, and the paper format?

I'm not going to get into details because publishers are entitled to confidentiality, and in any case it varies enormously from book to book. Not to mention the fact that I don't actually count carefully.

But in general terms it's all much of a muchness - those who want books will make an effort and follow the format, I suppose. However, e-books have the advantage of staying "in print" longer and so can be expected to perform rather better over the longer term.

Two general things are clear to me. (1) Most people outside the business vastly overestimate how many books (or databases) are sold. To use one of T Mark's old phrases, we are a niche market of a niche market. (2) There is a continuing marked decline of sales for individual titles. The overall level may be constant (though no more than that) but the pie is shared among many more books.

For me, automatic formatting (beyond format templates) is a disadvantage, because my formatting needs are more specialised than automatic formatting can provide. Therefore, ebook editors do not create an advantage for my formatting. Doing the formatting consumes about 5% of the time, so this is not a problem.

Robert, sorry, but you say "there is no prevalence of piracy" and then don't bother to back it up at all. There is a torrent familiar to many here which has more books, articles and magazines in it than most people will ever own (probably a multiple actually). There are torrents of many popular go software. There's probably even more private sharing going on between club mates and friends, e.g. people borrowing GoGoD discs, Go World DVDs and whatnot.

The problem in the go world isn't that there is an absolutely massive amount of piracy going on, it's that the market is so tiny in the West that any level of piracy affects sales quite badly because there aren't the economies of scale that you find in more mainstream publishing that helps cushion the blow.

Technically as long as Apple is alive as a company the in-app purchases you have done will be valid (IIRC it's part of their TOS.) So it's very likely all books I have purchased through SmartGo books will outlast me, or at least my go "career." If this was not the case, the amount lost on this "bet" would be negligible in a more big scheme of things, and even more given the convenience of having the books in a very readable format. Dynamic diagrams are an incredibly improvement with respect to ePub. I have Gateway to All Marvels for Kindle (silly me for purchasing it) and the SmartGo version (which I'm thinking of buying, go figure!) it's incredibly better.

I prefer paper books in most cases (problem books specially) but for game reviews or antologies (Shuei's, for instance, or Sakata's books which are not problems) SmartGo is a far better fit than a dead tree (or a dead PDF, or a dead ePub.)

Having my books trapped inside my iPad would only be a problem if I didn't have an iPad.

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Static ebooks are, OC, not dynamic, but, if well written, they show and therefore emphasis the relevant diagrams. For a reader, being shown the relevant diagrams is more important than having the possibility of dynamic sequence playing. The latter can be useful nevertheless, if one does not want to use or practice one's reading skill, a real board or genuine go diagram editor. When reading printed books or PDFs (other than pure game collections), I scarcely feel a need for a dynamic format, because I prefer to practice reading.

It depends. I like how Fighting Fundamentals splits game diagrams, and I didn't feel the need of getting a board. The diagrams were within what I could read (having the diagram.) But for game collections sometimes there will be spells of 20-25 moves without stop, and then it gets far harder to keep track. And as soon as variations enter the fray keeping track of it it's a problem, I guess once you reach 3-4d it's easier, but being in the kyus means reading is not as deep as a kyu would like.

I like how SmartGo books takes advantage of "new" technology, specially in front of some older unavailable books made in/for a new medium.

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

You do have to hope someone will keep SmartGo Books updated for all future versions of an iPad. I'm not as worried about Kindle books, since there is a very large corporate team that will keep Kindle going for a very long time. At some point, no one knows what would happen with SmartGo Books since it's a single person operation.

If iOS18 comes out and Anders is not able to update SmartGo Books, what happens to that collection?

Yup, this is the only real fear I have. So far all iOS incarnations have been more or less backwards compatible (some glitches can appear, but the general sense is to be backward compatible), so an app developed for iOS 3.1 still works with iOS 7, but Apple has a record of stopping to service older software... But it took a while, Classic mode for Mac OS only disappeared 1.5 years ago (give or take.) So I guess I can still count on having 5-6 years more of SmartGo books, being only moderately optimistic (i.e. just giving my new iPad the lifespan of my old Macbook, assuming no breaking upgrades come.) Still fair enough, I've had books that lasted less due to bad binding.

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Anders' SmartGo software has been around for decades now, he invented the SGF format after all, and AFAIK he has no plans to quit updating & releasing go software in the foreseeable future. I take your point about the size of Amazon vs. SmartGo, but knowing Anders & the extremely professional manner in which he conducts his business I'd be very surprised if he doesn't have contingency plans for SmartGo to continue operation should he be unable to run it himself.

Regarding your final question, naturally as long as one's iOS devices keep working and/or Apple keeps supporting the iTunes store then the collection will remain accessible. I also know that Anders does want to make SmartGo Books available on other platforms, so hopefully in the future these books will also be available to those who do not use iOS.

I like Anders's software and have used SmartGo for many years. I think he's a great developer and would love to see more development work.

I don't think that changes the fact that if he got hit by a car tomorrow, and Apple changes the architecture of their devices in two to three years (wouldn't shock me), then new devices would be unable to access SmartGo Books. Eventually earlier tablets would also start dying.

This is nothing personal against Anders or even Apple. It's just the way this software model works...

Can't you just link to sgf-file from within epub-books?

If so, wouldn't this make your main argument (which is meant to outweigh the fact that smartgobook format isn't crossplatform) moot?

I just made a little test-book from senseis beginners problem #1.
(See attachment. You have to rename the attachment to .epub, even though epub-files really are just zip-files. Anyway, I could only upload .zip)

It works here (win xp using calibre to display).

Could people with mobile devices report back on whether this works for them?
(Basically anything that can display epub-books should be able to display the text+diagram, and I would hope devices with an sgf-editor installed will let you click on the diagram to open the problem in the sgf-editor.)

Just linking to an sgf from within an epub really isn't equivalent. Have you used SmartGo Books? It's not just sgfs embedded into a text document. The first books style sgfs you see in the early SmartGo iPhone apps were like this though.

As it happens, I only discovered myself last night some of the extra benefits the SmartGo format has for the user. I got the final iPad beta version of Splendid Feast with a request to approve it before it goes off to Apple, and being all fingers and thumbs I tapped a page in the wrong place. Only after a few unexpected Xs came up did a vague memory resurface - SmartGo doesn't just let you play through games/problems (very attractively) but lets you guess the next move. In the case of problems it will also automatically then show a reply selected from the variations the author has made available.

However, I really do think users have to give more thought to the poor author. This is where SmartGo pays off. Imagine an sgf game with lots of long variations and comments. In the past this would take me hours and hours to sort out, to the extent that I would blench, dodge the work, and the book would lie fallow (Until someone like Bill Cobb came long). Now, with a couple of mouse clicks I can convert that file in a few milliseconds to formatted text with diagrams already prepared for the entire game (optionally broken down into segments) and every variation and every comment, all in the right order. I just have to weave extra text in-between and edit to suit myself.

When the diagrams are displayed, they come up at the right size (e.g. main figures are bigger than variation diagrams) with all the hidden moves (e.g. Black 6 connects, or White 12 ko) accurately listed under the diagram in a differentiating font. I can tweak to my heart's content. E.g. a variation diagram might automatically start at 1, but by just typing mn=5 I can make it start at 5. If I have some symbols A, B, C on the diagram, as a courtesy to the user I can now type hideInReplay= and these distracting symbols will be hidden when the user plays over the moves one by one. I say "now" because that's a feature that has just been added by Anders, with no work from me other than bleating about the distraction.

These are the sorts of things - and there are more - that make an author more willing to get out of bed in the mornings.

If someone comes along and offers the same facilities for Androids or whatever (plus protection, so that other publishers have safeguards), I am perfectly willing to let them publish. Anders has no exclusivity (except as an Apple product). I am also willing - indeed would be delighted - for a paper version to appear, but for that users need to put their hands in their pockets to make paper publishing viable again.

Actually, I have already been approached by other prospective publishers for all formats. I have said yes in principle every time. A deafening silence follows once they hear about the paltry sales numbers or the work needed, or they decide to spend time on real life. People worry about whether Anders or Apple may or may not retire or fall into a cider vat. At least they have stood up to be counted. The other, prospective publishers have effectively already chosen to fall under a bus without ever making their marks.

Maybe someone should organize a kickstarter project for JF for his paper version
I'd certainly buy the paper book.

_________________
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Just as a side note, Anders has already entertained the thought of something happening. (touch wood it doesn't)

https://twitter.com/smartgo/status/428898818969460738