The desire for the possibility of digital comics and novels came up again in the opening discussion of Babylon Podcast #260: The Lost Tales, Revisited.
While the interest in reading electronic books varies from person to person, we all know that the interest amongst fans is very strong, especially in making unavailable Babylon 5 books and stories available again.
THe hope has been that reproducing them in electronic formats would be a solution that’s both inexpensive for the consumer yet profitable enough for the rights holders to seriously consider the endeavor.
We can buy Babylon 5 episodes and seasons from the iTunes Store now, so we can hope that things may eventually change for the comics and novels.
You know how we feel about it… now, you can weigh in as well.
Feel free to discuss in more detail here in comments!
I know people will say give us anything B5, I think not. Even thought it feels like we have been in the desert forever when it comes to B5, I don’t think this is a good idea. E-books have no soul to it. It all looks the same and you might as well make it a blog. I’d rather have something colorful like a Graphic Novel like the Centauri Trilogy or the PSI Corp. War.
Your points are vague and make zero sense.
1) Define “soul”.
2) “It all looks the same” – How?
3) “you might as well make it a blog” – Why?
And who says ebooks can’t have colorful artwork, illustrations and other rich format media embedded in them? Have you seen some of the cool stuff being done with some ebooks lately?
Hypertext links to footnotes or external sites, the ability to make your notes right there inthe text of the book, the ability to send feedback to the author or publisher from right there inside the book… the possibilities are only limited to the imagination of the publisher.
Oh, wait. Time Warner and DC Comics. Um, maybe they would outsource…
Well, if we’re gonna dream, let’s remember that JMS and DC comics are getting along famously these days. Dan DiDio himself moderated JMS’ spotlight panel at WonderCon this past weekend.
If it’s e-book only, no. If it’s e-books and printable books, I’m all for that.
edit: print, not printable.
I’d like to see all the B5 script books and such in digital format as well. I bought the original script series back before I started my Master’s degree and reverted to being a starving student. I understand why these books have limited publishing runs, but the content makes more sense in a digital format, in my opinion.
Given all the work that goes into the script books, I can see why they wouldn’t come out in a digital only format. Making some of them available in digital editions for people who’d bought the physical books would have been a nice bonus treat, but I can see where that might have been problematic.
What would be perfect as a digital ediiton would be a collection of the short stories. I’d bet that would sell really well.
I voted no mainly because I’m broke. But honestly even if I had the money to spend, I’d rather buy reprints of the paper books than digital versions.
Absolutely YES! I guess if you’ve got the choice to read it either way, you can make an argument for why it should only be one format or the other. I, like many,many people are visually impaired and electronic books have allowed me to become a reader again. If it’s paper only, it’s a “No sale” from me.
In last night’s podcast (possibly inbetween shows) someone mentioned that there was a pdf of the Marcus story online. If you do a search you should be able to find that and Genius Loci.
Shoot–I included some links, and I think my comment went to the spam folder. (I’m not a spammer, I promise!) Is there a way to get it back?
Summer, it won’t let me post links here, and I’ve tried with no html. Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Sure, you can post links here… just post them without any HTML trappings, and it should be fine.
I put all of them in as “www.example.com/example” or “example.com/example,” no .html (I took out http:// too this time for good measure). It still isn’t allowing me to post.