Final

Deep Web & Open Web

For the first article I used the database Ebsco as my deep web resource, and all I needed to do was search the terms “Print” and “Future”. The article showed up as the fourth on the page, so my terms were pretty reliable when it came to finding this article.

ASPECT: There is an author’s and publisher’s name with this article and the author’s credentials. The article is presented as fact and contains credible sources that are documented in the book. This source was written to inform and argues a perspective, it is a pretty general topic and just right for research. The date of this article is also appropriate, being published in 2011. Because this article contains so many areas from the ASPECT evaluation, it is very much so a trustworthy source.

For the second article, I used Google as my open resource. I used the terms “books” and “dead” and “authors”, the article showed up as eight on the list.

ASPECT: There is an author’s name and publishing date that is current and publisher name, but no author credentials. The article is presented as fact yet is written to inform and argues an opinion. The topic is somewhat general and mostly fact, but is good for research. The author provides many sources for his information. This is also a trustworthy article to use, because it fits the evaluation criteria.

                I decided to read the article, “Are books dead, and can authors survive?”, which focuses on the extinction of paper books and the era of digital publishing. The article discusses whether author’s can continue writing for a living and actually make a profit or fall from the profession. Based on statistics, Barnes and noble sells three times as many digital books as it does paper, amazon alone sells 242 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks. And of course with the majority of society consuming their news digitally, it isn’t surprising that ebooks have taken a new turn. But that’s not to say that hardbacks and ebooks can’t both exist, for example not only do we have digital news, but also printed news which continues to flourish.

                Unfortunately, with the rise of digital publishing, the midlisters (neither bestsellers nor first timers) are dropping like flies. And many writers are also beginning to abandon the profession entirely, believing that publishers and their distribution systems are out of date. Mainstream publishers struggle to compete with digital publishers and cause authors to end up with a load of debt. Many writers begin to convert to digital publishing, due to the removal of their living wage they end up in the digital market known as the long tail.

                The long tail is essentially graphs of sales against number of products. Publishers use to focus on selling only a few heavily promoted bestsellers in bulk, however digital shopping has meant that publishing has become increasingly profitable. Instead of selling, say, 13m copies of one Twilight book, a long tail provider can now make virtually the same profits by selling 13m different or failed books. However, authors continue to make a profit off of hardbacks, because many individuals seek paper made books rather than digital. And individuals that do not own tablets, computer, cell phones, or laptops continue to purchase hard backs due to their lack of technology. Not only do schools use hardback text books, but colleges too.