Books on DVD

by Richard Seltzzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat

We've been offering books on CD for a couple of years. Now it's time to add books on DVD.

Most people associate DVDs with video. But they are just another, very efficient way to store information. These book DVDs do not work in the kind of video DVD players that you hook up to a television set. Rather they work in the DVD drive in a Windows PC -- and the vast majority of new PCs sold today come with a DVD/CD drive as standard equipment. (Similarly, our book CDs don't work in music CD players, but rather in the CD drive of a Windows PC.)

Because the complete text of so many books can fit on a single DVD, we are able to keep the price very low. Our Complete Book CD includes over 8000 books and sells for just $99. That amounts to about a penny and a half a book -- less than books sold for in the days of Dickens. Designed for ease of use without any need for computer knowledge, this is, by far, our best bargain.

The Complete Book DVD includes all the books of the Classic Collection (American Literature, British Literature, World Literature, Children's Books, Non-Fiction, REligion, and Books about Classical Music [just the text files, not the Finale .mus files]), plus Cook Books, plus Victoriana, plus Australian Literature, plus Canadian Literature.   The DVD is organized the same way the CDs are -- with an overall index and a separate directory for each CD, and each of those folders has the same folders as the CD does, as well as the same index as the CD. Whenever we update any of those CDs, we'll immediately update the Complete Book DVD. And if you buy the Complete Book DVD from us, you can buy updates to it -- with all the books -- for just $30. (Institutions can buy an update subscriptions -- four updates over the course of a year for $100.)

Our CDs and DVDs are all "hand-crafted". The selection and organization is based on my decisions, not on any automated computer program. I do my best to provide what you want and need in a form that's convenient, easy to use, and inexpensive.

The books on the DVD are in plain text (ASCII) form, with no encryption and no compression. The file names are the same as the book titles (no bizarre abbreviations). The books organized into logical folders/directories (by author or topic), and an html index with links to all the books makes it easy to quickly open the book you want.. The DVD includes the text and only the text (no special formats like .pdf or .mus and no software like ReadPlease).

Keep in mind that with the DVD and with our CDs, there is nothing to prevent you from copying some of all of the files to your hard drive. Then you should be able to use readit.exe or other DOS
programs as you normally would. And yes, once you have done that (whether through Windows Explorer or wordpad or your browser or whatever), you can make and save edits/notations etc. (NB -- in some cases, the program that does the copying will automatically mark the copied file as "read-only". If you run into that, just go to the Properties for that file and remove the "Read-Only" indication.

I also plan to offer DVDs based on our other CD collections -- e.g., Period, Genre, and Theme. The books on those would also appear on the Complete Book DVD; but the unique organization would make them useful.

If you don't have a DVD drive in your current PC, you might want to consider buying an add-on external drive (for around $100).

For details, please check our online store http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat/dvd.html

A library for the price of a book.

This site is Published by B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. (617) 469-2269. seltzer@samizdat.com

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