Digital Books Now Available

[finescalerr]

Effective today (noon Pacific Time, March 8, 2012) Westlake Publishing's books are available as downloadable PDFs.

As I have explained elsewhere, every Modelers' Annual will remain on sale until Armageddon and each is ready for download now.

The 2012 Logging, Mining & Industrial Annual and Narrow Gauge Annual will remain on sale for about a year, until the next year's books replace them. That is because Mal Ferrell and I hope to offer slightly edited and expanded versions of his articles as standalone paper publications. For example, his recent three part series on the Denver & Rio Grande Western's Third Division someday will appear in a single volume.

The price of a digital book is $15.00 and delivery is immediate. Each book consists of 12 separate sections in a Zip folder.

If you missed a book or want something for your iPad or to keep on the computer, the digital PDFs are your answer.

You already know I tend to embrace technology but, my predictions notwithstanding, these things are cool. I've been producing them and ferreting them away for about a decade, waiting for the rest of the world to get in step with what has been possible. Even you guys who insist on paper probably will come to accept and even like them.

Russ

[darrylhuffman]

Russ,

I hope I am smart enough to find your site and download an issue or two.

But if you include a link with your future announcements that will be easier for us to use.

My local shop stocks your issues but I am moving to the great unknown and will enjoy this version.

[Seattle Dave]

The link is in the top "Westlake Publishing" banner.  It shows up there as "ORDER BOOKS".

Dave

[darrylhuffman]

Dave,  thanks.

I found the link at the top of the page and went to the downloads page.

But I could not see the contents of the issues and don't remember which ones I bought and sold as part of my move.

My days of keeping a paper library are over.

Our new house is about half the size of our current one and space is a premium.

No room for a layout.  Just small dioramas.

But that's all I build anyway these days.

Thanks again.

[marc_reusser]

Hey I just saw this on FaceBook!

Darryl, there are some folders in the FB album page, that have some images/excerts of a couple of the annauals.

Marc

[CN6401]

Russ,
This is great news, I will look into this more when I return from Europe.
Ralph

[Krusty]

Well, that was painless enough. I've finally got a 2007 Modellers' Annual for a spot of light reading sometime.  

The DRM is mildly intriguing. The PDFs can be copied no problem -- given the proportion of freetards in the various modelling hobbies, I hope Russ isn't being too trusting. It's also no problem to extract individual photos -- yet the plans are strictly off-limits. That's kinda, sorta a nuisance, as it prevents resizing plans for use in a different scale in Photoshop or whatever, which can be preferable to farting around with printer settings.

For some strange reason some of the PDFs don't resize at all gracefully when displayed in the native PDF viewer on a Mac. If that's also true for iThings the support person could be headed for a bit of a busy period, given the hundreds of thousands of sales these annuals will no doubt attract.

[finescalerr]

There is no way to copy protect a PDF effectively. I have tried to account for some degree of theft in the price, just as all e-publishers now must do. Did you say hundreds of thousands of sales? I think I'll be lucky to sell a dozen of each!

What is the problem with the plans? Each is an image, just as a photo. While each has a copyright, it is perfectly legal to print and/or resize a plan for your own use (although the resolution will deteriorate as you try to enlarge it, as with any image).

Finally, about the resolution, I am looking at a plan in the '07 Annual at 300% enlargement and it is very crisp. Is it possible your Adobe Reader settings need a tweak?

Russ

[Krusty]

Russ

I was just having a quick play in Acrobat 9 (the full version, not reader). There wasn't really a problem, it just struck me as odd that I had no difficulty extracting contone scans, whereas line art was strictly off limits. I've since found that although the security is set to allow copying &c, it's necessary to change a setting and do a bit of fiddling (details of which it's probably best not to mention publicly) to steal access the plans.

The issue on a Mac was with resizing to fit the screen in the Preview app, which most Mac users use in preference to Reader 'cos it's generally snappier and less buggy (and comes as part of the standard OS install) and only affected the first page on a couple of sections. Possibly a slightly corrupted download, or some weird side effect of the document being originated from Pigmaker. They came right when viewed as some exact multiple of 100%.

[finescalerr]

Pigmaker should not have caused a problem because I Postscripted the file before creating a PDF. Pigmaker is a minor problem for other reasons, mainly its antiquity resulting in minor bugs. I may, very reluctantly, upgrade a lot of stuff this year or early next. That is something I wanted to avoid given my anticipated reduced publishing schedule. -- Russ

[W.P. Rayner]

Pigmaker.... Can't believe you're still using that! At least you're not still using Quark...

Paul

[marc_reusser]

Pigmaker.... Can't believe you're still using that! At least you're not still using Quark...

Paul

Back-off dude! I think I stll have the floppies for both those programs in a box somewhere! 

...now, if I could just figure out where in my PC the floppy goes.......


Marc

[W.P. Rayner]

I too still have floppies around somewhere of Quark and I believe I have some of the large floppy disks for Quark as well... that's bordering on prehistoric.

Paul

[Krusty]

Pigmaker....  Can't believe you're still using that! At least you're not still using Quark...

A decade or so driving Quack in exchange for food & drink left me with an Pavlovian twitch whenever a wee ditty called Quark, Strangeness and Charm, put out by some smelly hippy Brit band, pops up on EweTube. But even Quirk v.1 was still a blessed escape after Ventura Publisher -- that was banned as inhuman punishment under the Geneva Convention.

[marklayton]

Hey, Russ -

Just downloaded the 2012 edition of Logging/Industrial.  Looks great!

Mark Layton