Variety: Play publisher Samuel French Inc. is expanding into electronic publishing, launching an ebook sales program on Tuesday.
Gradual rollout of titles and devices will initially see about 100 plays -- from scribes including Charles Busch, Marsha Norman, Israel Horovitz and Dale Wasserman -- made available via Apple's iBooks app, with Kindle, Nook and other platforms to follow.
Company aims to have some 300 titles available by the end of the month and targets the 1,000 mark by the end of the calendar year.
12 comments:
Not surprising to see one of the leading play publishing companies starting to sell their products through the digital medium. I'm kinda surprised that other companies haven't made this move before, since the digital store has become such a big thing with Amazon, iTunes, and etc. It should make it a lot easier to get plays and allow theater practitioners to have a wider variety of plays, although there are some (probably myself included in this category) who will wish to see the play in print form more often than not. It's not a surprising move, or a bad one either, just a natural progression as we move towards a more digitized society.
It's a move in the direction that society says we are going, that's for sure. I'm curious, however, to see if this takes off. I know that most of the people I see buying Sam French texts are actors in search of a monologue, or teachers who will then probably copy the play for a performance or lesson. These aren't things that are advanced necessarily by the addition of digital copies, but maybe it means more reading of plays, which is always a good thing. I just hope we aren't going to see actors doing their blocking from ipads anytime soon, although that could also turn out to be efficient. I guess only time will tell.
I certainly understand the move to digital. I don't have an ipad myself, but I've downloaded books quite often to my computer and found things online for less money than I would pay for a print copy. It is just logical that Sam French would go digital. It is only a matter of time before most plays are available digitally. The classics already are available online. I love the convenience of having the computer search for that specific line or quote, but I also love the feel and smell of real paper books. I hope they are never completely replaced by digital.
I certainly understand the move to digital. I don't have an ipad myself, but I've downloaded books quite often to my computer and found things online for less money than I would pay for a print copy. It is just logical that Sam French would go digital. It is only a matter of time before most plays are available digitally. The classics already are available online. I love the convenience of having the computer search for that specific line or quote, but I also love the feel and smell of real paper books. I hope they are never completely replaced by digital.
Am I the only one thinking, "It's about time!" here? With millions of people moving to digital material I'm surprised that publishers of plays like Samuel French wouldn't have jumped on this bandwagon sooner.
That said, I wonder if having digital copies of plays will further the segmentation of works and plays available. What I mean is now that [for example], actors looking for monologues and critics looking for quotes and/or excerpts might only grab what they're looking for and disregard the rest of the work; something that is more difficult when holding the entire printed piece in your hands.
So happy to see this article on the blog this week! But I am quite surprised that this is a new thing for play publishing companies. I had figured that they, as in publishing companies, would have jumped on the technological-device-reading-bandwagon early when it first became big. My biggest concern however was the issue of editing, such as highlighting lines or writing notes on the side of a script that would have been easily done with paper. But maybe this is an issue that stems from my lack of knowledge surrounding these devices full. Little do I know they brush your teeth for you and do your laundry. There's an app for that, right?
this is not at all surprising as one of the biggest fears of the literary world and one of the largest reasons why all of the entertainment industry is in a state of upheaval is the newly available digital form of distribution. this digital distribution era is something we have seen mildly be taken in by many of the public domain plays but this coming up we will see a whole new shift in the way plays are distributed. of coarse we will always have a use for a paper copy , but this is a great way to get copies of scripts especially if you need them quick,which as we all know in this business is commonly the case.
Everyone is seeing this as a great way to get copies of scripts and have better access. You would think that plays should be available online in our technologically advanced society, but what about royalties. With this happened scripts will already digitalized making it easier for people to share scripts, and get them without paying. This goes along with the music industry and people torrenting music, what if people begin to torrent every popular script? How will we ever control royalties besides shutting productions down? It will be interesting to see if you can print the script, what kind of reader you might have to use, or if you can download it. If we do move to electronic scripts this might lead to a new program for scripts, blocking and reading back lines. Could be the start of something great or the overpowering scripts that everyone will soon be downloading left and right.
Though I prefer to read a hard-copy of a book, I think French's move into ebooks is great. This move makes their plays more accessible to everyone. While I really do like holding a physical book, there is nothing better than presenting literature to an even wider audience. This is a great move.
This is a pretty good move for the company considering we seem to keep getting more and more paperless as time goes on. I would've guessed that this move would've been made much sooner along with audiobooks and the like, but hey, better late than never. I'm curious to see how successful this will be for the company. I'm worried that this will make things easier to photocopy and there won't be as much profit as there should be for the plays bought online.
this seems like a logical choose to me. A lot of the media we interact with today is digital and most people are on a computer daily. If we read our newspaper and watch tv on the computer why not read plays on the computer too. the digital format makes storage and accessibility a lot easier for someone who has a lot of different scripts to keep track off. the only argument i have ever heard about reading a book or play in digital format instead of hard copy is that you miss the feeling of paper.
this seems like a logical choose to me. A lot of the media we interact with today is digital and most people are on a computer daily. If we read our newspaper and watch tv on the computer why not read plays on the computer too. the digital format makes storage and accessibility a lot easier for someone who has a lot of different scripts to keep track off. the only argument i have ever heard about reading a book or play in digital format instead of hard copy is that you miss the feeling of paper.
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