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Plagiarism? Though it is
common knowledge to many that are involved with the book industry in general,
written materials penned by an author is copyrighted and legal those of that
person. The publishing industry, since they have entered the e-book industry,
has begun bracing for e-book piracy. As with self-publishers and independent
authors who produce and publish e-books, they are focusing on encryption
technologies to prevent pirating of their digitally authored works and
copyrighted materials. One auspicious case of illegal distribution included
the book that started it all, King's own Riding the Bullet, when an encrypted
version was quickly cracked and posted illegally online. The book industry is
sure to run into the same copyright troubles hounding the music industry and
it seems that very shortly there will be safeguards in place to protect these
authors and publishers. The Way (Tao) of the Word Warrior Now that I’ve
hopefully give you some idea as to the “State of the e-book art “, I feel
compelled to mention that as a martial educator for almost 40 years, I think
e-books are one of the very best supplementary mediums to convey knowledge,
technique and instruction to the serious student that really wants learn the
many aspects of a chosen style in its pure unadulterated completeness. These
technological wonders can convey the most of technical physical “how to”
instruction that was usually only reserved for video back in the 70’s, 80’s
and 90’s. Only today it can be found in the form of “streaming video” that
can be artfully integrated into a program course such as a digital
e-book. Even stop-action animation can
be utilized to emphasize to teach exacting particulars of complex maneuvers.
In addition it has the best of both worlds when it comes to conveying the
written word along with still photographic inclusions that, until recently,
was only reserved for paperback books. What is even better is that this
unique concept can be designed and produced to artfully merge both of these
forms of communication. Unlike either books or videos they can be
self-published, packages and produced in such minimal amounts that it is
highly cost effective for the martial arts teacher that operates a dojo on a
limited budget. Let’s look at
the financial numbers here. Typically, paperback book publishing is not only
a risky business but it has enormous publication costs associated with it as
well. Design layout, writing, editing, photographic inclusions (even most
costly with color plates), binding services, printing enough volumes to
justify the cost, and warehousing expenses. What is interesting is that all
of these expenses (which can run into the thousands and hundreds of thousands
of dollars) usually paid for by the publisher before one book is distributed
or sold. With digital
e-books, a complete product can actually be created “in-house” by a
knowledgeable, computer savvy Sensei and with a reasonably good computer
system and printer. Naturally a few good choice software programs are needed
to create an e-book. If one can write reasonably well, has experience in such
programs as Microsoft® PowerPoint®, Microsoft® Publisher® (MSPUB), Adobe® or
Corel® Photo programs and the likes, he or she is basically in business. Select a
martial arts topic that you are expertly skilled in with respects to martial
arts, set about laying out a book format (don’t worry about size, space, or
color plates), all of which are basic financial considerations for trade
paperback publishers, because you can put hundreds (if not thousands?) of
pages on one CD-ROM or DVD disk. A standard CD-ROM disk has the memory
storage capacity of 800 Million bytes on information (80MB). Now that’s a lot
of space to create a lot of color photos and text pages. In my Shorin-Ryu
Encyclopedia CD-ROM e-book I have exceeded 1,700 pages and I’ve not yet
completed the project. It has easily over 500 color photos of considerable
size added to this work. To put things in perspective (remember I discussed
advantages and disadvantages earlier?) a commercial publisher would find it
impossible to create a work of this magnitude. Well, maybe they could in true
paperback encyclopedia form but it would cost millions of dollars and they
would have to produce hundreds of thousands of sets to make it cost
effective. Can you imagine how big the warehouses would have to be to store
all of these volume sets until they sold them? On the other hand, with
e-books, you only need to create the original digital “master” on a program
of choice, convert it to HTML and then make as many copies as you need at the
time. Then create (or have someone knowledgeable in Web site design) create
one that features your products and get out there and market them. Even if you are not computer literate in
the truest sense of the word, the costs of creating and producing the e-book
is a mere pittance of what it would be to publish a simple 150 page trade
paperback book. What more, is that you can have total creativity of the
project without being constrained by absorbent cost factors and the
likes? As a martial art professional
you owe it to yourself to begin considering the e-book approach to teaching
and promoting your art, yourself and your business. |