Book
collections on CD and DVD. A library for the price of a book.
Limited time offer: 2 for the price of 1
1 -- Yahoo Store http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/
With nearly 12,000 organized in nearly 200 different CD collections,
we needed to reorganize our online store to make it easier to find what
you want. In some cases, the same book might appear on several
different CDs. For instance, Plato would appear in Philosophy, Ancient
World, and Non-Fiction; and Shakespeare would appear in British Literature,
Drama, and in 16th Century, as well as on a separate CD devoted to his
works and the works of his contemporaries. Much of the value-added is in
the organization which leads to this overlapping -- the books are presented
in useful contexts, so you can readily find what you want, and so you can
see relations and connections among books and authors.)
Our store design now includes a search box at the top of every page. You can enter an author's name or a book title and get a list of links to the item-pages for the book collection CDs on which they appear.
It also has a navigation tool bar on the left margin of every page, to make it easy to go to the main categories (DVDs, Classic Collections, Period, Genre, Theme, Region/Country, World Leaders, and Authors).
And at the very top of each page, you can click to get to an "alphabetical list of CDs and DVDs".
2 -- New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/arts/09conn.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Ed Rothstein's article "Sampling, if Not Digesting, the Digital Library" discusses our book collections on CD and DVD, and puts our business into context.
3 -- Personal Anthologies http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/peran1.html
Select up to 100 books from our collection of nearly 12,000 public
domain books. I'll do all the organizing and technical work to turn your
selections into a "personal anthology" on CD, custom-made for you, including
a custom-made index document with links to all the books. You pay $49 for
the first copy of your anthology; $19 each for additional copies.
4 -- Custom-Made Book DVDs http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/customdvd.html
We can include on one DVD all the books from several up to dozens of
our book collection CDs (the quantity depends on the storage space required
by each, up to a limit of about 4 gigabytes). Please call us at 617-469-2269
to discuss your choices and determine how many of them can fit.
5 -- Filling Station http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/fillingstation.html
You can get your book selections on your memory card. This offer is
meant to help those who don't have a CD drive or who prefer the convenience
of a custom-selected library of books on a memory gadget you can keep in
your pocket and connect to a computer wherever you might be. This could
also be helpful for people who have computer-like devices, such as BrailleNote
that can handle memory cards and plain text files but do not have disk
drives.
This is how it works: 1 -- You send me a blank memory card by snail mail. 2 -- By email and/or by phone you let me know which the CDs or DVDs the contents of which you would like included. If the conversation is over the phone, I can let you know how much space is left, and how much space other selections would take up. 3 -- I then send the card back to you (first class in the US; air mail outside the US).
Basically, send me a blank memory card (such as Compact Flash -- "CF card"), and I'll fill it with books.
The prices will be same as for the equivalent CDs or DVDs.
For details about your particular needs/concerns, contact me directly by phone at 617-469-2269 or by email seltzer@samizdat.com
6 -- Free Ebook of the Week. http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/freeb.html
Just send me an email (seltzer@samizdat.com)
and let me know that you want to be added to the list and each week, usually
on Tuesday, I'll send you a complete book as an email attachment. You can
see a list of all the books we've sent out since March 2004 at http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/freeb.html
Likewise for our free kids' book of the week (a separate list -- you can be on one or the other or both) http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/kid.html
How many people do you know who love books but have never read a book on their computer? I'd be happy to add them to these distribution lists as well. Please spread the word.
7 -- CD of the Month. http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/cdofmonth.html
Each month I put together a new CD with book selections that
complement one another. Such a collection falls midway between what we
have come to think of as a book and what we think of as a library -- an
organized set of books with some element in common, which brings to light
relationships that might otherwise have passed unnoticed, and that suggests
paths for further research and reading. $89 for a 12-CD subscription.
8 -- Updates 2-4 times per year. http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/updatesforcds.html
As new public domain books become available in electronic form, we
expand our existing CDs, adding dozens, sometimes hundreds of books. If
you buy a CD directly from us, you have the right to buy up to 4 updates
of that same CD, for the update price of just $10 per CD ($20 for 2-CD
sets, $30 for 3-CD sets. The updated CD includes all the books, not just
the new ones. Keep in mind that you could use this offer to buy Christmas
gifts. You can see a log of what books we have added to what CDs, and when,
at
http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/updates.html
Similarly, if you buy a DVD directly from us, you can buy up to 4 updates
of that same DVD, for the update price of just $30 per DVD ($90 for our
Complete Book 3-DVD set).
9 -- Email messages.
We also send out email messages to customers alerting them when we
have made significant updates and when we have created new CDs. On average
that comes to two messages per week. Please let me know, by email if you
would prefer a monthly summary message, or if you prefer no messages at
all or if you have friends that you'd like me to add to the list.
10 -- Book Collections on DVD.
For those of you who have DVD drives on their PCs, our best bargain
is books on DVD, which are organized just as the books on CD are, and which
you read in the same way. Book collections on CD are far less expensive
and more convenient than printed books; and book collections on DVD are
far less expensive and more convenient than CD. Our book DVDs have nothing
in common with movie DVDs. We use the DVDs to store books -- thousands
of books (4.7 Gigabytes worth).
Our Complete Book 3-DVD Set contains nearly 15,000 books and sells for just $149. We also have DVDs for Genre, Period, and Region/Country, which sell for $69; and Theme, American, and British DVDs which sell for $89. Once you have bought a DVD from us, updates to that DVD sell for just $30 (per DVD; that means $90 for the Complete Book 3-DVD set).
11 -- Contemporary Books in a Classical Context. http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/booksincontext.html
We are building a series of CDs that include copyrighted contemporary
works presented together with the full text of dozens of related public-domain
books. In the best of all possible worlds, you wouldn't have to chase down
books referenced in footnotes, and works alluded to in fiction, but rather
would find them on the same CD or DVD as the main book. In non-fiction,
footnote links would take you not just to the bibliographic information,
but rather to the text itself. We're making one small step in that direction.
12 -- Site Licenses.
http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/sitelicense.html
Intended for schools and libraries, a site license for the Complete
Book DVD (currently containing nearly 12,000 books) for a single school
or library, to make the books available over a local area network, with
password access, is just $499, which includes four updates, over the course
of two years. This is a perpetual license -- it does not expire.
13 -- Support.and Office Hours
If you have questions or suggestions or requests, you can reach me
by email at seltzer@samizdat.com
or call me at 617-469-2269. Also, each of our book description pages at
our Yahoo store has a link that you can use to immediately "chat" with
me online (when I'm online, which is often). And I also use Skype (video,
phone, and chat). My Skype ID is richard.seltzer. The best
time to reach me is 1-3 PM on Tuesdays. But I'm often available at
other times as well (I work at home).
14 -- Online Discussion with Other Readers.
So you can share your insights into how to get the most out of this
new way of reading and studying, we have set up an email discussion group
at Yahoo. All are welcome to join and to post here, but I manage this group
in "moderated" style, filtering messages before they go out to the whole
group, to control the volume of the messages and to make sure that they
are on-topic. Tips and information that would be helpful to people you
have plain text books on CD are welcome -- including examples of how you
are using yours, suggestions for improvement, suggestions for future CDs,
and useful/interesting texts found on the Web that should be included in
future CDs. To subscribe, go to the discussion group Web site at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/plaintextbooksoncd
or send a blank email to plaintextbooksoncd-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
15 -- "Blogging About Books"
http://www.samizdat.com/blog
I post new articles about once a week (such as today's "What's the
Best Way to Preserve Book Files?"). Most of my posts deal with books, especially
book collections on CD and DVD. But I'll also sound off on other topics
that interest me. The current categories also include Internet trends,
computer trends, politics, and off-the-wall ideas.
16 -- Free Advice on How to Sell at eBay and How to Do Business on the Web. Many of you first discovered our CDs at eBay. I've published several books of advice about business on the Web, and have posted hundreds of helpful articles at my Web site http://www.samizdat.com You can get to the dozens related to eBay at http://www.samizdat.com/auc.html I also have posted on the Web (since Feb. 1994) a free blog-like newsletter, Internet-on-a-Disk. You can check back issues at http://www.samizdat.com/ioad.html
17 -- Reading Lists.
I select and organize the books on our CDs personally, by hand -- not
with automated programs. I greatly benefit from advice and suggestions
from customers, but rely mainly on my own reading experience. Others, who
are reading addicts like myself, might get a kick out of an online list
of the over 2900 I have read over the last 49 years, (since I was in junior
high school) http://www.samizdat.com/readall.html
plus related lists, like favorites, that are linked to from there.
18 -- Articles about the impact of electronic books and what's happening to book publishing at http://www.samizdat.com/bookpl.html
19 -- Teachers' and Students' Guide: Suggestions on how to get the
most out of your books on CD and DVD at http://www.samizdat.com/guide.html
This includes:
21 -- Mobipocket Reader
If you have a Windows PC and read your books on your computer screen,
you should download the free Mobipocket Reader and give it a try.
This is software designed for portable gadgets like Blackberry and Palm
and those that use Windows Mobile. But there's a version that works great
on Windows PCs, presenting the text on your screen in a very easy to read
format. Just go to
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/ProductDetailsReader.asp
and click the red download button in the right column. After you've
installed it, try moving some of your plain text books (like the ones I
email you). Just open the reader software, click on Import (from the selections
at the top of the screen), then in the drop-down menu that appears click
on Text document, then navigate to select the file you want. In a
few seconds, the software creates a copy in its special format (.prc) and
puts that copy in a new folder (My Ebooks, under My Documents). The
book appears on your screen ready to read, in a format that lets you flip
pages (left to right), rather than scroll down.
Suggestions always welcome.
Best wishes.
Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com
Book
collections on CD and DVD. A library for the price of a book.
Limited time
offer: 2 for the price of 1
Return to B&R Samizdat Express
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