Posted by Jerry Silverman on March 09, 1999 at 23:41:47:
Back during the planning for ACOR II, a suggestion was made to make scans of all the pictures of the rugs in our exhibition "Mideast Meets Midwest." We could put them on a CD-ROM in a pocket in the back cover of the exhibition catalog. But that was eons ago, back in 1993, and we decided that no one would want to see the rugs that way when they could just open the book to see the same pictures.
Now the question arises: why bother with all the expense of printing a book when its contents can be posted on-line? If the author wants to charge people to view the book, that can be done with credit cards and assigning passwords. No muss, no fuss, no printing costs, no postage, no middle men. Photography would still be a cost as would page layout. But there's no reason why rug books couldn't be published online for - to pull a number out of the air - 50% as much as the "dead tree" alternative - or less.
Can you imagine yourself buying an on-line, downloadable version of an oriental rug book?
-Jerry-