Dave Thomas wrote: > > On Aug 4, 2006, at 3:56 PM, John Gabriele wrote: > >> No, it's not just you. The font is too wide. Your eyes have to zoom >> uncomfortably fast back and forth across the page to read sentences at >> your normal speed (i.e. not enough words per line). Maybe it's done to >> make the book have more pages, dunno. > > > Actually, we'd love the books to be fewer pages. However, we did a fair > amount of research on fonts, and we worked with readers early on to see > what fonts worked for them. The Bookman we use turned out to give people > the sense of being approachable while still being readable. Everyone is > different of course, and I understand what you're saying about the > width. At the same time, I get a fair number of e-mails from folks > saying they love the layouts. > > Every now and then I experiment with changing the fonts around (we > recently changed the code font in all our books to make it narrower) and > I'm still open to suggestions. But approachability is still important to > me, and I wouldn't want to go with anything harsh. > > Regards > > > Dave > 37signals produce a book called "Getting Real" for download, watermarked per purchaser. They have made better margins on the book than they would have through a 'normal' publisher. CSS can be used to format pretty much anything (within reason) in a 'custom' manner. What would stop an author from writing a book, publishing it online with watermarks and a EULA (or equivalent) holding purchasers responsible for the watermarked editions of the book, and then selecting a format for the book (font size, style, etc.) that could be used to generate a CSS file through which the book would be printed to .pdf (for example) and downloaded by the purchaser? Is there a reason an author would not use such a system, were it available? Is the retail channel so powerful, it makes such a scheme unworkable to content creators? There are 'civilian' versions of such, but I was thinking of 'real' books designed for a mass audience.