New Commodore 64 eBook "C64 Hardware A Compendium"

[Harveys42]

Over 450 Hardware extensions for the C64 and Co.
Thematically sorted with a lot of Texts, Photos, Internet links and QR-Codes.
There is an extract available to review the content.
Holger

Just search for "C64 Hardware A Compendium". Available in many online Bookstores (About 60MB as ePub or mobi)

[Unseen]

Buyers beware: Check a preview of the book content before buying, e.g. using Amazon's "Look Inside" function.

The "book" is just a collection of copy-and-paste content from various web sites, including this forum, with basically no editing. For example, the part about eslapions PLA replacement even includes the "posted by" header and "last edited" footers from the posting. I don't see any value in this book, so I would recommend not buying it.

[Harveys42]

Hello. This IS a Collection what the Titel Compendium implies. The mentoining of the Author is a credit to him and "last edited" should show when it was last used so anyone can see how old this entry and hardware is. So this is intentionally.

[eslapion]

I have to be thankful to Unseen for this clarification.

I find it worrisome that somebody would publish my forum postings in a book without asking for any clarification about the context, permission or technical updates.

[eightbitswide]

Mine has been published without contact.. Yes, it's troubling...

[ckoba]

Thieves are everywhere. They'll steal your keys and sell them back to you (in my case, it was a camera). This is no different.

Publish something on the publicly accessible Internet and someone will figure out how to make a dishonest buck on it. This one is different only in how brazen the scam is.

[MarcWalters]

I visited Amazon and viewed the preview pages.

It's a shoddy, badly planned "book".

Problems:

• The layout defies pretty much every rule of typesetting and visual design. Images and textual components are dumped in a linear fashion with no contextual indicators, no break in flow, no style and definitely no thought.
• Text lacks a narrative "tone". The content from multiple authors leads to frequent and annoying changes in style and tone.
• Information not required for this type of book is included as either useless padding or perhaps because the publisher could not be bothered to remove it.
• There is no consistency of image placement, paragraphs and captions. It is a mess.
• It was not proofread or edited! For example, "Data B(a)cker"?!? If a publisher cannot be bothered about accuracy and quality then it shows he considers his product to be of low value.
• The content is no better than if the book was simply a list of clickable URL links on its content page.

However, this could be a useful compendium if it is reorganised and rewritten to stand above all the other self-published C64 "compendiums" of Wikipedia and other website content.

I suggest:

• Design a structure with high-level topics based on, for example, general product class or current availability (useful if the compendium will be regularly updated).
• Anchor each product class or subclass (eg non-volatile IEC bus storage devices) with your own introductory information (compatibility issues, general speed comparison, usefulness), precursors to that class of item (1541, bubble-memory), history of the class (1541-III...), and justification for its use (fast, saves space, non-mechanical).
• Provide detailed contact information in its own section at the end.
• Develop a consistent and visually attractive style.
  For example:
  • Have consistent image size and dimension.
  • Use one distinctive font for your own text, and a different font for content from others.
  • Keep technical specifications and dot points in either box-outs or a second column.
  • Use horizontal space, dividers and spot-colour to give readers' eyes an occasional rest.

I hope that helps.