Haven't seen this being announced so far: Kiseido has published their first eBook title for SmartGo Books (iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch).

Modern Master Games: The Dawn of Tournament Go
Rob van Zeijst and Richard Bozulich

Description: A collection of eleven masterpieces by some of the great players of the post-war era. An exhaustive commentary accompanies each game. Starts with the atomic-bomb game between Iwamoto and Hashimoto, Takagawa's dominance of the Honinbo title, the rise of Sakata and Fujisawa Shuko, Fujisawa Hosai and his imitation go strategy, and more.

See also here (there is a PDF sample): http://www.smartgo.com/en/booklist.htm

I've not picked it up yet, but the first chapter looked definitely interesting.

Bought it right away, might give a small review after the weekend.

I just hope they don't stop publishing real books.

That seems very unlikely.

I really enjoy reading books on a portable device, and the ability to replay diagrams inside an ebook is fantastic and needs to be experienced to fully appreciate, but I admit that I would be more comfortable paying the full price if the ebooks came in a more portable format to ensure that I can still use my ebooks in ten or twenty years. As it stands now, I would probably buy both the ebook and the print version, which isn't exactly economic.

I think the format itself is (semi-)open, but I don't believe there is a way to back up the SmartGo ebooks to a computer. Quite possibly that would also raise piracy concerns.

Right, without an iOS device, I can't even buy the "books". That makes it fairly limited to me.

Honestly, I think it just has to do with the numbers.
There is a huge cost associated with publishing go books in paper form. I've heard many publishers complain about it, along with the low return and flooding of the market by books from Korea/China.

Ebooks might be a solution, but, certainly not if it limits the market to owners of iOS.
I would study off a dedicated ebook reader instead of a book. In fact, I would gladly trade my go book library for a stocked kindle. Go books are heavy (or maybe that's just because I like to carry 5 around at once...).

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What makes a format open? It's not a binary blob, but it is undocumented only partially documented (is this right?) and subject to change, with (afaik) no examples available off of iOS devices.

Is there any kind of exclusivity arrangement regarding the sale of these books? If someone built an Android or desktop player for them they could start negotiating for rights to sell them.

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Anders posted about this here with a link to this document: http://smartgo.com/pdf/sgfkifu.pdf

As for the rights, I have no idea. I think an Android "player" would be a great idea, but ideally, SmartGo Books purchased for the iOS devices should also be usable with the hypothetical Android player, and vice versa, which then would require Anders to maintain both (shared customer database). The vendor dependency would continue to exist.

You just barely beat me to the punch there.

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Looking at it from the inside and knowing some of the figures, I don't share your optimism. At least, the current situation has stopped me writing books*, and if others stop writing, too, as I know they might, there won't be new books to publish. The e-book trade is even more dire so far, and I don't expect significant change soon.

It's hard to say what has made the current books market so bad. I have banged on a lot about lack of advertising outlets and lack of reviews, and I remain convinced that has something to do with it, but judging by what others in the business say, I may have underestimated the importance of piracy. Of course, the general economic outlook must influence people, as well, but the scale of the downturn suggests something more than a little belt-tightening.

I notice the decline in activity on SL and L19 and elsewhere, and I begin to wonder if go is in serious decline in the west, though I fail to see any good reason for that. The nearest I can get to a rational hypothesis is that, whereas once people might get to play a real game once or twice a week and so had the rest of the week to read books, now they can play all day and every day online, and can even get teaching online, so they feel they don't need or want to read books.

*I've stopped, but there is one book in the pipeline awaiting funds for printing. GoGoD activity continues, of course.

You might also point the finger at the US Postal Service. A few years ago they dramatically increased the shipping rates for international parcels. Overnight the cost of a book increased by 30-50%. Until then I used to order interesting books as a way of pointing publishers in directions that I thought were interesting (i.e. more higher-level books). After that the price became prohibitive, and I haven't ordered a go book by mail for quite some time.



I'm beginning to think that the availability of online play has hurt the sense of community that go used to enjoy, at least in North America. Going to the weekly club meeting and the congress were ways of building and maintaining friendships that just doesn't happen in the same way with greater online activity. Whether that loss of community affects book sales I couldn't say.

With Gerry Mills' bookshop now having closed down, I wonder where we will get books in the UK. Pentangle's range is, to me at least, not worth examining. Gerry Mills used to visit tournaments in Ireland and sell books there, but no we have no outlet at all. In most bookshops here, we simply cannot even find books on Go.

Perhaps I should be writing to Slate and Shell asking to buy some produce in bulk?
I really haven no experience of running a 'bookshop' though.

I have no desire to buy online books, as I hate reading material off a screen. If you went to Scribd a few years ago, it was possible to access almost every Go book Kiseido had published, and EVERY book Janice Kim had published - free for download in pretty good quality. Then I informed them how to remove the books. Still I expect they are available elsewhere on the internet now. This might have an impact on sales...

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I'm sure you're right to say this is a factor, but the sudden downturn I'm talking about seems more in the last 12-18 months.



The last two e-AGJs I got mentioned cancellation of two tournaments. This may just be coincidence, but this plus the lack of explanation or comment spoke volumes to me. Maybe the go community is redefining itself, but the growth of me-me-me blogs and the like, in contrast to a one-paragraph national journal, suggests revolution rather than evolution. It's an old hobby horse of mine, but the use of fake names is not a very sociable way of going about things, either.

I'm no anthropologist, but I suspect community spirit doesn't just happen. I'm sure it has to be worked at. I was talking today to a lady who organised a go event for women in Tokyo. She got 200 people AND over 20 of those were over 80 - and not a computer in sight. Even in Japan it caused enough surprise to get her interviewed by a newspaper, but it shows what can be done.

Harrisburg was reported to be cancelled due to weather. My guess is Hoboken could have been as well. The northeast US has been getting hit pretty hard lately.

Is it the same situation for the sales of chess books? There are plenty of online servers, and computers make formidable opponents, so there is probably likewise less need to attend face-to-face meetings.

I think Go's "problem" in the west is the lack of figureheads and any kind of "hype" or media attention. Hikaru no Go helped matters a little, but now things have to be moving back into this "1970s" state where the game is for geeks and intellectuals. There's no mass appeal. It doesn't help that Go isn't rooted in "our" culture and in spite of what is often claimed, it's not "easy to learn". It's confusing and for a beginner it's not at all clear who has won at the end, or even when the game is over. A physical set is also more cumbersome than a chess set.

I guess what I mean is that Go is just harder to learn of and harder to get started with. Then there is the difficulty of sticking with it when the frustration sets in and progress slows down. I've taught the game to a few people, and without "handholding", none of them would have stuck with it.

Go is a little "dusty". Games like Starcraft 2 aren't all that different from Go, at the very core, but they attract young people all over the world, so it's not that the younger generations have become more shallow or less interested in "thinking games".

Yep, it's made a big difference in what I buy. Not just go books, but anything from the US.

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