An essay from the point of view of a wealthy individual funding a creative is a novel topic. One that was troublesome to research as this business model seems to be prevalent in the “renaissance” time. There is a thoughtful approach to using an aged business model and comparing it to similar and recent ones, such as Kickstarts crowdsourcing. However, I would argue that the similarities between the two were hard to distinguish between the two and that it seemed that crowdsourcing was a more viable business model to tackle.

Style:

The embedded hyperlinks that link to sources really created an easy reading experience as I could explore more information regarding the topic. The embedded image was a great use of explaining information in a more visual way, but lacked context. It would have been beneficial if it contained context and a potential link to wear this CTA (call to action) came from. Again, I really appreciate the attempt to help with the reading experience including the small details of warning readers of pay wall and emphasizing certain data points by underlining it. However, I would suggest to focus on a key reference and underlining that. In the current essay, there is areas of compounded underlining, which means underlines that appear right after another. By doing this, it lacks emphasis on a certain key idea in which you want the reader to focus on.

Content:

Throughout the essay, there was thoughtful uses of resources that shows that the writer has done prior research to the topic. The references included are a mixed of diverse articles, which shows that the writer has thought about the topic from multiple perspectives. Therefore, eliminating bias around the topic being presented, which is about authors benefiting from the business model of Patronage.

The intro of the essay lacked a clear and impactful thesis because the thesis did not take a stance on the business model topic, rather it was presented as a passive statement. Furthermore, the thesis was presented in the middle of the introduction of the essay and followed with history about the printing of books, which did not supply relevant information that pertained to the topic of “patronage”. On the other hand, the claims that was presented in the body paragraphs were consistent and did take a stance. However, each paragraph lacked depth of coverage and analyzed the claim at a high level. I would suggest to limit your paragraphs to few, but show depth instead of covering topics at a high level. Right now, there are 7 body paragraphs and some of those paragraphs do not go into as much depth as I would like. As an example, when the writer talked about neo-patronage affording an author “ certain freedoms that aren’t possible through selling their works directly”, it would have been great to include examples of publishers that did benefit from that statement and explaining the thought process behind the claim. Also, analyzing the tradeoffs of this, what is happening now to authors and why should they go in this route?

I think what would be more interesting would be how engage and how much do I understand about that article I read? Yes, we can read something, but to read something and not engage with it or truly understand it is the same as not reading something at all.

or because it was assigned as mandatory reading aahhha

Im curious about if this could apply to Student Libraries as well. Our libraries are somewhat public only to universities though. I find that based on different campuses of SFU it skews differently. The Surrey Campus has the latest technology so I am sure the data would have been a lot different, compared to Downtown, which has nothing.

What type of information? After the talk in class about how majority of the books are still under copy rights therefor it can't be scanned for the general public. I would say books that are pre internet are harder to find and could contain some important historic information. Not so sure about new content though.

What do they do in their. I am pretty sure they sit and use the internet and use the library as a workspace. I don't remember the last time I took out a book or material from the Library. Mainly, the library is a nice workspace with internet to do work in and focus.

Tradeoff, the glare on the ipad is awful. It was not designed specifically for books, where the kindle was a book first approach. I would say that Apples Ipad was designed for other purposes and realized they had the potential for books, then tried to fit the reading experience of the book into the design.

Based on user testing sessions with apps I have created, the first thing people do all the time is to scroll even if they don't what the content is. This is true for web as well. On websites long pages aren't bad. Instead, lesson learnt designers should optimize for current user behaviours, which is scroll.

Is this similar to twitters bootstrap a set of framework styles you call in and link too in your html sheet? Or what is it, a written brand guideline like mailchimp where it lists the do's and dont's.

What does this mean making it accessible in relation to CSS. Does this even require CSS because CSS is styling the page. I am trying to understand if its CSS that is making it accessible or the designer who are designing re colouring there books for people of color disability to see or is it accessibility in terms of CSS3 allows for rendering on multiple browsers?

Lets rephrase this. HTML5 + CSS3 is the look and structuring of the page. These so called "languages" are what programmers call as markup language, which is very different from programming languages. Don't mix the two. Programmers will be offended. HTML+CSS= markup. Actual programming languages include Java, Javascript, PHP ... etc, but not markup. To make things "interactive" requires either javascript or PHP which interact with markup languages (HTML+CSS)

Hi Adrian,

The essay you have presented highlighted a lot of though provoking questions about the effects of technology and how it is diminishing the traditional analog medium. As an example, in your intro, when comparing both the publishing and game industry you posed a question of “are books dead?” and “are disc-based games dead?”. These types of question helped captivate me as a reader as it had relevancy to technology topics today. In addition, the essay flowed well and the direct hyperlink helped with providing background context as a reader.

Style:

Throughout the essay, there were many instances of compounded questions, which is multiple questions one after the other. To make it more meaningful, you should explain your thought process and intentions before proposing a question. In my opinion, when you propose a question, a singular question is much more impactful than chained ones. Furthermore, visually your intro was a very large paragraph and your thesis was embedded in the middle. You should separate that, ending with your thesis because it allows readers to distinctly understand where the paper is going to proceed.

Content:

The intro of the essay lacked a clear and impactful thesis because the thesis was announced to the readers. Instead, the thesis should have been weaved in with context and presented at the end. In addition, by compounding a question after your thesis, it distracts the reader from the thesis statement, thus limiting the impact of your statement. The question after your thesis, “we must begin asking ourselves how relevant will it be?” should be your goal as the writer to provoke readers to think of those type of questions based on your thesis statement. Using action words, being clear and avoiding personal opinions will help create a strong thesis statement.

Generally, the body paragraphs of essays start with claims. However, there was a lack of a starting claim in the body of your essay. Therefor, some paragraphs felt similar to a summary of the articles that was included instead of a synthesis with a clear stance on where the gaming/publishing industry is headed. Again, I appreciate the thought provoking questions in the essay, but I would suggest to provide more data points and sources as it will helps make your statements more clear. As an instance, after describing a point, you shift gears into asking a question, “what then happens to your digital content?” Instead, you could weave in this question with your previous points and provide data points as to the digital content. Right now, your essay is heavily opinion based as you provide a lot of personal reflections of when you purchased games. This, would be more impactful if you provided a source or reference that is outside of your personal experience to assist with making your essay much more credible.

I am curious how the pricing model works? Is it based on assumptions or does she need to present actual data in order to come up with this number.

I think there are many reasons not. I think there needs to be more transparent communication between e digital service provider and publisher. Based on our reading about Publishing is living in a world not of its making, [publisher don't fully understand the distribution and consumption model online. Therefor causing some resistance] (http://www.idealog.com/blog/publishing-is-living-in-a-world-not-of-its-own-making/)

Well, there hoping that if you share to facebook, your friends could know about this service and you are doing the peer marketing for them.

What would you call these "other" guys then? Tech companies, Online Book stores?

Yes and no. Yes as in its important to understand and cater your apps to certain operating systems- IOS, Android lollipop. No because at the same time if big companies started making it harder for smaller more innovative companies to publish on their os's then they will go somewhere else. There will always be multiple platforms to publish on. So, big companies have to take that into consideration that the development community makes up their app store, without them there is no app store.

What caused this though? Why did we as consumer favour discounts over quality. When did consumer behaviour change to this?

this is mind blowing that Spotify does not treat their artists properly. 4 million hits to make revenue/ living wage at the least. This is definitely unachievable for most musicians.

Sure physical book businesses are driven out, but this shift isn't necessarily bad as well because now tools to publish a book are even more accessible and Amazon is giving authors the chance to easily publish their book. There should be benefits to this as well.

I am wondering how the marketing strategies to target people is since there is so much supply for books. It must be a challenge trying to get the right content to the right reader.

Interesting to see the concept of DIY or self publishing started back in the eighteenth century. I am wondering how distribution of publications would work at a time like this.