It makes sense for the publisher to do so, but I think eBook makers (Kobo, iBooks, Kindle) might have more to lose if books aren’t DRM protected
this points to a good critique of the work, but it doesn't come out and say it explicitly. It seems to me that you are suggesting that the essay overlooks device maker's interest in DRMs. If so, this is a large oversight, and one that could have again become the focus of the essay.
Another area
same comment as above.
I’m curious if you would find the same in regards to music.
Do you think this is a flaw in the essay? Or is this just a suggestion for another direction in which to go? You mostly want to focus on the former in a review.
nemesis
weak paragraph. It ceases to be commentary and goes to the realm of what you liked without stating why it was good.
Great
not a sentence.
stronger
another good observation.
I do really appreciate that you mentioned how digitally savvy the population is becoming, and how pirating was once reserved for highly intellectual hackers, now 7 year olds can figure it out. I think that’s very important to predicting piracy concerns in the future.
instead of framing this in terms of what you appreciate, it would be better to frame it in terms of the essay tackling an often ignored perspective, or in terms of the forward thinking nature of the piece.
just so different
so different how? Giving the reader (and author) a better sense of what differences you mean would strengthen your review. Is it just the price points?
I’m sure there are statistics on how many students pay for books
if you make a claim like this, you have to do at least a little research to see if it is true, and to offer some stats yourself as part of the review.
You do mention both, but DRM’s have different impacts on the two
This is a good observation that could easily have become the focus of the review.
You wrote a really engaging essay on DRM and I was able to learn a lot from reading it. You did a great job in your research, and I feel as though the quotes you pulled really fit and assisted in the argument you were making.
keep your review on the general, and not on what it did for you personally.
while arming the reader with enough information so she/he might come to their own opinion
this seems contrary to the claims that the essay could have used more detail.
Again, if anything, this is where I felt there was room for more detail within the work
This is a valid critique, and combined with your earlier point above, it would have made for a stronger review if you'd tackled it as a core flaw in the piece and used this as an example.
I agree
don't worry about whether you agree or not. Just if the author made a strong case for it, and whether you found it convincing.
argument made
I'm not sure I understand your critique here. If changing it alters part of the argument made, then isn't it a good idea not to change it? What was lacking in the way it was presented? If it failed to explain the concept, you should point out how, and then offer this as a way to improve it.
I tho
starting to feel a little disjointed when I look at this paragraph in relation to the previous two.
she provided the funniest quote I’ve read in a very long time
which one? Is it funny because of how ridiculous it is? Was humour the intended effect of the author when she introduced that quote? Bring the answers to these questions to bare on the critique.
Further details about Wattpad and how the company might adapt the Youtube business model and overcome the challenges it faces would provide the reader with even more information to answer for themselves the question posed.
The takeaway here is that you're suggesting that the author fails to convey what aspects of the YT business model are those she is referring to.
The structure of the work is well laid out
don't give a point by point. Give the overall critique and feedback and use specifics to explain how you arrived at the overall critique.
It is, in fact, always an interesting time to be a pirate.
ha!
One small criticism
if it is small, why is it the first one you're giving us? Or why are you giving it to us before the good things if its the only one?
It would have been easy to dismiss these concerns
tell us what the essay and author do well to make us think about this further.
much as they lost power to Amazon in the early 2000s.
I thought the essay underemphasized this point.
And we tend to be consume books more actively, highlighting, sharing, and holding on to our favourite books. I’m curious to see how subscription services will accommodate these preferences, and whether they will change the way we read.
how does this relate to her argument? You're offering your opinion here, but not a critique of how she's presented hers.
Another interesting point
Don't do your review point by point. Pick the overall comments you want to make and then make specific points to back those up.
both sides of the argument in a fair manner
Does it?
I think a longer review would have let you explore further what the essay does and does not offer.
But, what does this mean for p2p site owners in the long run?
The fact you're asking this question suggests a critique, which would have been good to see here: The essay presents a lot of facts about the situation, but offers little in terms of opinion, speculation or interpretation.
the question that comes to mind is how authors
good question, but in a review you need to tell us what the author was lacking that lead to this question in the first place. Is it an incomplete presentation of the problem? That's what you need to comment on.
As argued in the essay, it is high time publishers free themselves from the dependence of DRM.
You're contributing opinion and adding to the essay, but not reviewing or critiquing her piece.
I believe
Why do you believe it? Or, more importantly in the case of a review, what does your belief tell us about Alessandra's essay?
interesting
why is it interesting?
I totally agree
Don't worry about whether or not you agree. A review should talk about the merits of the essay, and it will probably become clear whether you agree based on what you say about the arguments, instead of what you say about your own understanding of the issue.
prove your arguments
Be careful about your use of the word "prove"
What about authors and success of authors on an open platform like Wattpad, without the involvement of a traditional publisher?
This is an important question, and serves as a springboard for a good critique. I would probably use this as the basis on which to start your review: that the essay successfully tackles the importance of platforms like Wattpad, but fails to contextualize how it fits into a larger picture, and that by focusing so narrowly on Wattpad, Nitant is blind to its dependence on the success of the publishing industry as a whole.
’d love to see a cross-reference on how many of those followers have also read After on Wattpad.
why would you love to see it? What would it add to the essay? In your review, you need to offer the shortcomings of the essay and then, only after you've done that, can you suggest arguments or ideas that would have addressed them.
“That Wattpad literature abounds in but fails to extend beyond fan fiction is the general refrain.”
who are you quoting? The essay? Why are you quoting the whole sentence? It is followed up by another sentence that does not reference the quote.
free
again, this is a counter argument, but not a critique of the essay.
Wattpad though, combines the platform with this dialogue, creating a community around the text which traditional publishers have been largely unable to do. (Authors, however, have been successful, like with JK Rowling’s Pottermore.)
This is a contribution to the essay, but not a critique of it.
convinced
how did he convince you?
and no one else
What has this paragraph told me? A little about what the essay is about (not your job in a review) and that you thought it was "interesting", "forward-thinking" and that you "appreciated" it.
appreciate
another empty word.
interesting
why? Interesting is a very empty word, that offers little to the reader.
It would have been interesting to develop points on free digital content versus paid print content and the effect of data mining on each.
Instead of saying it would have been interesting, you could point out that she leaves an important aspect of the discussion out. Bring up why it is important, and what it says about the essay that it is missing it. Only after doing that, can you suggest Madrigal as part of the solution.
I don’t think that these statements are common knowledge and you leave yourself open to objection
a valid critique, one that could be framed in more general terms.
last sentence from paragraph four to the first paragraph, as well.
You're thinking like an editor, and not a reviewer. I understand it must be hard to take off that editor hat.
more firmly stated in the first paragraph
don't worry about where in the essay it wasn't stated clearly. What would be important is if the thesis came through at all as one read the essay. Comment on the essay as whole, and whether or not it ever manages to convey a clear idea.
Any of these points could have been expanded into a standalone essay.
so what's the larger critique here? Is it that she pulls into too many directions without going into details in any of them? Or is it that she offers a lot of food for thought, and her essay is richer because of it?
interesting
and why are they interesting?
Some points I thought were interesting:
work your points into your prose, not just as a list. You also want to point out why they are interesting, and what they say about your larger critique of the essay.
editorial crap
appropriate language?
This amount of detail on AI may have been too much
This is getting into a more valid critique of the missing authors. You could have said, for example, that the essay, as presented, is out of context from a larger discussion about AI and that the author has failed to ground her larger arguments into this larger context and, by doing so, has elevated the role of AI as something special when it may be part of the broader general trend that Gates, Musk and Hawkings allude to.
you did not mention
Its valid to point out key thinkers whose points of views haven't been included, but it is not enough to say that they weren't mentioned. You should identify a key idea that is missing, and then you can cite these thinkers yourself.
It feels like perhaps you had your argument, but after doing research came to a different conclusion.
This is the core of your critique. It should be at the forefront of the essay, pointing out that the author is inconsistent in her presentation of the issue, and that there is no clear voice of what the author or the audience should think after reading the essay. Its a good insight, and could easily be the focus of your entire critique, with other points being subsumed.
Aren’t they out of a job?
Again, instead of putting this in terms of questions, analyze her arguments and pinpoint the logical inconsistencies that lead you to asking this question.
me with some questions
Your job in a review is not to ask questions of the author, but rather to analyze why the author left you with questions in the first place.
The earthquake example clearly explained what these robots or algorithms currently do. While it does appear at first that a human wrote the article on the earthquake, once you know what you are looking at you can see it is strictly data.
This sentence is disconnected from the first. If you're opening with a general statement about the essay, continue giving me some generalities on what to expect in the rest of your review. The opening sentence suggests the review will focus on the informative aspects of the essay (even though I know it probably wont).
this essay has the potential to address the neglect of debates around the impact of digital and print technology on the three spheres mentioned above.
what does the non-capitalization have to do with the potential of the essay? These are two disconnected ideas presented in a single sentence.
Besides the
This comes out a little out of nowhere.
am not totally convinced
why not? This is precisely what your critique needs to address. What is it about her argument that leaves you unconvinced? What could she have done better?
Perhaps that was the writer’s intent, to leave the reader with the opportunity to form their own opinion on the impact of technology on academic learning, social interaction and health
Put this paragraph in the form of a critique that offers insight. Something along the lines of: "While the author attempts to make a compelling argument against the use of digital reading in important aspects of our lives, she only succeeds at opening up questions without ever convincing the reader. The one-side presentation of arguments calls into question the research presented, leaving the reader to question the very premise the author set out to convince us of."
Or something like that. Just going off the top of my head.
This essay is concisely constructed to point out the three factors impacted by technology, mainly in academic, social, and health spheres.
two 1-sentence paragraphs makes for a jarring opening. It feels abrupt and leaves me wondering where you review is going. This sentence just seems like a summary of the topic of the essay.
Interesting
what's interesting about them?
Other small improvements could be made in terms of voice consistency
This is a disconnected idea from the sentence before it.
is not clearly stated until the fifth paragraph
I had the same critique
when they are two very different acts
This is the kind of critique that could make up almost the entire review. You can speak about how the author confuses the two, opening up for all kinds of flaws in the subsequent arguments.
I like idea of having quotes at the beginning that are short and to the point to give the reader a sense of the tone of the essay. However, I think the quotes are a bit misleading because they suggest the essay might be about the positive sides of hacking, while when you continue to read, you realize the essay is about information theft.
Don't take the essay point-by-point in order. Use specifics to make a larger point, not critique specific execution decisions.
From a narrative perspective, your voice and style are consistent throughout the essay. The opening and closing “chicken” metaphor, while drawing the reader in from the beginning, adds coherence to the text, making it a more engaging piece.
This is unnecessary, and feels tacked on. Either incorporate those comments into the core of what you're saying or leave it out. Your review says a lot as is, it does not need to comment on every aspect of the piece.
If they are to retain that throne, they need to be faithful to their truest identity, inextricably rooted in social media.
This is getting into an interesting analysis, and should be the focus of your review more than the first paragraph. It should be the lead, then you can talk about how the essay does make some good points. However, this is the heart of your critique and should be at the forefront.
your argument falls short.
Now we're getting somewhere.
interesting
why is it interesting?
Wattpad’s “grains.”
Instead of going though each thing that the essay convinced you of, take a step back and talk about how the essay made a compelling argument. Analyze the strength of why it was compelling, and use the specifics as examples.
gave me a better
and it is about what a reader can expect, not what you got out of it.
You
You're not writing this for Mike. It is a review, not feedback.
To suggest otherwise seems idealistic and could cause the reader to begin to question the rest of the argument.
This is an interesting angle that could serve as the focus or at least as good hook into your review.
I also agree with this essay’s conclusions
reviews are not about commenting on whether or not you agree, it is about commenting on how well the essay presents the argument
founders.
The opening of this paragraph and the body don't go together. Think about the main thing proposed in your examples here and comment on that instead. Use the specifics as examples of a grander point about the impenetrable argument that Sophie made.
In regards to structure,
Try not to do a point-by-point on each aspect of the essay. Give an overall picture, touching on each of the aspects without necessarily calling attention to which you're addressing.
I otherwise knew little about
a review shouldn't be about you, it should be about how the essay addresses the topic generally. You can say it was informative and gives a good overview, if you think it does that for the general reader (or the intended audience) but not if it does that for you alone.
actually
you're surprised? You can leave out this word.
Is there a need for governments to fund these projects if publishers aren’t willing to? Does it really even matter if publishers contribute to the canon of electronic literature
same as above on questions.
If I remember correctly
do research and look this up if you want to mention it as a counterpoint.
ow do platforms like Wattpad fit in this changing landscape of fiction? Is there room for publishers on this platform? And what of works like Kate Pullinger’s Inanimate Alice?
Don't just ask questions, address why the essay left questions like these open and answer the questions by way of pointing out what the essay left out.
several great ideas from the likes of Michael Baskar and Liza Daly
which? why are they great?
Gabi, using Bill Gate’s
do not address the person directly. Its a review of the work, not feedback to the author.
In the simplest terms possible, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing is a method of distributing and downloading files. More complexly, P2P file sharing relies on a group of internet users, known as peers, voluntarily connecting their computers to form a network that allows them to share and download files.
starting with a definition is not a very fun or engaging way to kick off an essay.
is pretty good
This is the entirety of your opinion as presented in this piece.
Of course
again
of course,
again
in fact
again
Oh, and it’s being done using polite
again, not the appropriate tone for a graduate essay.
On the user side of things, finding a case against an individual Canadian P2P user is like finding a needle in a haystack, or harder.
why is it harder than anywhere else?
That’s right, Canadian ISPs are sending courtesy emails, and it does, in fact, seem to be working.
"That's right" is not appropriate tone
Of course, there are still those who dispute the validity of the above conditions, and it is unlikely that the government, legal, and tech communities will come to a consensus on the matter any time soon, but for now it is the Canadian government that has the final word on the matter.
More interesting would have been for your opinion on this
common argument presented
citation needed. presented where?
hotly debated among members of the tech and legal communities
citation needed.
of course,
You use "in fact", "of course" and other such phrases in your writing. It only gets in the way of what you're trying to say. Try reading this sentence, the one before it, and the one above the quote without the "in fact."
There are numerous conditions considered by the court when determining whether a person has in fact infringed copyright under subsection (2.3), but in broad terms, what this means is that popular peer-to-peer networks and their related services that facilitate the free sharing of content and material still under copyright (and the people who run them) could be breaking the law.
convoluted
It is an infringement of copyright for a person, by means of the Internet or another digital network, to provide a service primarily for the purpose of enabling acts of copyright infringement if an actual infringement of copyright occurs by means of the Internet or another digital network as a result of the use of that service
Is the interesting question here about whether or not these sites are in violation of the copyright act as it is written? Or if they violate the spirit of copyright law?
Is it legal?
I see what you're doing now. This is a guide, not really an essay, so there is less of a narrative.
The most popular P2P file sharing protocol is known as BitTorrent, and is estimated to have anywhere from 150 to 300 million users [1].
interesting fact. The figure seems low to me, I would have gone to the source and looked into the study, or found alternative estimates.
Once a peer has downloaded a file, they then become what known as a seeder and are able to share that file with other peers within the network.
and TWO full paragraphs of opening with a definition is definitely not ideal. I would like to know what the essay is going to talk about.
It’s up to the decisions of the big 5 to prevent ebook subscription services from becoming another huge department within the monopsony that is Amazon
Here, it would be interesting to talk about what publishers did with Amazon originally (let Amazon take care of eBooks!) and what publishers are doing now with Scrib and Oyster (let them take care of subscription! Its not Amazon, it'll be OK!).
however, as time goes on, this begins to look like a losing battle
Do you think that is the case for those holding out of Netflix?
they’re launching their own streaming services, which is what the big 5 should be doing to take advantage of this new revenue stream.
I see what you are saying now. This was not clear earlier.
he addition of Macmillan to libraries that already include big 5 publishers HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster pushes Oyster’s ebook count to 1 million, and Scribd’s to half a million (Plaugic).
a bit of a convoluted sentence.
This paper will discuss the business models of such services, the impacts the services will have on the industry, and who exactly has the power to control how these services move forward.
Good. I like the narrowed focus, although I found this paragraph to go in too many directions and to offer a lot of background that would be confusing to the uninitiated reader.
we can assume means
assumes or means?
a very similar model is used by both services
This seems counter to your 10% comment above. One is complicated, the other 10%. The 10% Shatzkin talks about is likely just an example/simplified perspective.
The difference between these two cases is that iTunes doesn’t hold the power behind Spotify
I don't understand the connection with iTunes here.
They
who is They? What system?
the power.
the power to do what?
You were presenting a clear case until this paragraph.
the big 5 are willingly allowing Scribd and Oyster the opportunity to completely revolutionize the book industry as they know it.
Is the argument that the big studios did not "allow" netflix to get to where it is? Or Spotify? Because neither of those services could have become successful without the music and movie industries buying in.
At the same time, reader experiences would also improve, and subsequently, numbers of sales.
this seems a little tacked on. It comes out of nowhere and it is not substantiated by anything.
Amazon has mass control of the online book market, and to a large degree, DRM is the tool that gave it its teeth
ah. Great. You brought up the point I argued for in the previous comment.
seem increasingly convenient,
The counter would be: the people who benefit from the DRM are the platform providers, who want books to be locked in their ecosystem. By strengthening the platform providers, some would argue, you are helping publishers maximize their sales.
s extremely risky and has a strong possibility of backfiring
why?
it visibly hurt [their] sales
a counter here would be that if all publishers did this, then there would be a rise in expectations that books are available and thus more places to search for illegal copies.
it can be argued that DRM on eBooks will only become less effective over time.
It is unclear from reading so far why DRMs are ineffective. If only sophisticated pirates can crack them. Of course, I agree with what you're saying, but you have not explicitly explained why DRMs are so often ineffective. Is it just incompetence on those writing the software? Or is it something inherent in DRM?
publishers become increasingly dependant
is this the tension?
handful of cases that made it to court were largely unsuccessful.
citation or footnote explanation.
Interestingly, the language used identifies the crime as “plagiarism,” rather than “piracy,” showing the different attitude towards sharing text as opposed to other media.
an interesting point, one that might have made a little more sense earlier in the text when you talked about text traditionally operating under a hybrid economy.
As Wattpad gains momentum as a platform, it will also attract pirates.
this point is a little disjoint from the previous one.
It is technically illegal
I would change to "It is generally considered illegal" or something like that. There is a lot of debate as to whether or not all derivative works, such as fan fiction are illegal although I think you are largely right.
ffline, book publishing already exists in a hybrid economy.
an interesting proposition
saw
sees.
The turn of the millennium was an interesting time to be a pirate. In 1998, the Sonny Bono Act extended the American copyright term by twenty years, meaning that works slated to enter the public domain that year—most notably, the earliest Mickey Mouse movie—would stay protected until 2019.2 Meanwhile, the World Wide Web was exploding in popularity, and with it, file-sharing software such as Napster, and, later, Kazaa, Limewire, and torrents. Despite heavy DRM (digital rights management) and lawsuits from major record companies, so-called “pirates” showed no signs of slowing down. Heavier locks led to more sophisticated workarounds; new file-sharing platforms sprung up as fast as lawsuits crippled others. Media companies pushed for more restrictive copyright protection in courts, while online, people all over the world performed what Anil Dash calls “a massive act of civil disobedience”– posting videos online with the words “no infringement intended.” These words indicate that they purposely violated copyright because the law didn’t match their expectations of how they could share and reuse content.
very strong opening.
The vast majority choose to make money. Some earn a six-figure income from YouTube views, and the program has made over a billion dollars for the media industry since it was launched.
citation needed.
famously
famously?
differentiate between an article written by a person, and one written by a computer
it seems that if they are going off a template, it was in fact written by a human. If the robot was generating the text, I could see it becoming easier to distinguish between the two. This is akin to the Turing Test for detecting artificial intelligence.
relatively unable
can you be relatively unable?
plugging in the data to a template of pre-written text
ah, that seems a little like cheating.
An
I see this is the example. This paragraph should come before the previous one.
News publications can learn to use the robots in conjunction with their journalists without hurting the quality of their publications, but only if the technology is embraced and understood, otherwise the risk to jobs will rise and news will lack its human touches.
we need to know more about these robots at this stage, at least through a couple of links to stories that talk about them further or through a brief explanation of how they work and who uses them.
argued
where?
Working for an increasing number of news publications, computers have become journalists and are writing the news, accurately and quickly.
citation?
Technology with all of its positive contributions, has been feared just as long as it has been celebrated.
good opening.
Sources: “Print-measurement-bureau-canada.” LinkedIn.com. Linked In, n.d. Web. “PMB Print Measurement Bureau – PMB 2013 Fall Study Overview.” PMB Print Measurement Bureau – PMB 2013 Fall Study Overview. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. Peck, Don. “They’re Watching You at Work.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 20 Nov. 2013. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. Andrews, Lori. “Facebook Is Using You.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 04 Feb. 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. Gierasimczuk, Tom. “Vice Age.” Marketing Magazine Vice Age Comments. Marketing Magazine, 08 Feb. 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.
add links. "Sources" should be styled to indicate it is a heading.
The CEO is excited when he hits this part of the sermon: the revelation that Vice’s predilection for “making shit” has become his company’s main revenue source.” (marketingmag.ca)
I'm not sure this paragraph has the intended effect.
““
double quote
the content is shit.
is this a quote? source.
Completely ironically, the previous quote was sourced from an online magazine – marketingmag.com – and the article about Vice is promoting its business model.
so are we supposed to trust it? Isn't this the kind of thing you are saying puts trust into jeopardy?
Believe it or not 50% is actually quite a high percentage of editorial content – many magazines are up to 70% advertisements and advertorial.
citation needed
It is now expected and accepted for magazines to have 50% editorial content and 50% advertisements and advertorial
citation needed
People have been conditioned over many years to implicitly trust print
citation needed
They are limiting people as to what they read.
isn't any publication subject to this?
“Data aggregation has social implications as well. When young people in poor neighborhoods are bombarded with advertisements for trade schools, will they be more likely than others their age to forgo college? And when women are shown articles about celebrities rather than stock market trends, will they be less likely to develop financial savvy? Advertisers are drawing new redlines, limiting people to the roles society expects them to play.”
should be pulled out as blockquote
This means that they unknowingly also trust what advertisements are chosen for the magazines.
does it?
People tend to trust what is in print over other forms of media. T
citation needed.
not to encourage critical thought.
I would have thought the news would be subject to the same critique. There are countless of things that could be reported, but news outlets use data to determine what news to present and how to present it as to garner more readers.
If magazines no longer publish with this in mind, they cannot help but publish tired material simply because they know it will interest their readers in some way.
You are more or less stating what is your main argument as if it were supporting evidence for it.
Publishers have long been thought of and expected to be cultural gatekeepers.
by whom? For all kinds of magazines? all publishers?
produces advertorial,
I don't see the direct link between data being collected and advertorials. You'd have to explain this link.
“by one estimate, more than 98 percent of the world’s information is now stored digitally, and the volume of that data has quadrupled since 2007. Ordinary people at work and at home generate much of this data, by sending e-mails, browsing the Internet, using social media, working on crowd-sourced projects, and more.” (theatlantic.com).
don't quote across sentences. Shorten the quote and pull out the pieces you need, or paraphrase and cite the source.
While this sounds impressive, it is nowhere near what publishers collect now.
relevance of paragraph? I assume it is to make a point about how the data we used to collect is nothing compared to what we collect now. If that is the case, you should make it explicit and work these stats into something that substantiates the point, instead of leading with the stats, leaving the reader to wonder why they matter.
The Print Measurement Bureau (PMB)
abrupt transition.
The readers have inadvertently become the content creators.
does this follow from the previous?
Publishers no longer think in terms of the best content selling their magazines, but rather the content best tailored to their audience to sell the most magazines
this distinction is not clear. Some would argue that the data is used to decide on the best content, as measured by the readers.
they negatively affect magazine publishing by determining the entire content of a magazine from editorial to advertisements to advertorial
same. something you'd have to argue for in the essay.
metrics are used too much
This is for you to argue.
Of course they had their readers in mind, but they weren’t slaves to data endlessly counting how many “likes” their Facebook page received or how many times their tweet was favourited.
You're confusing data and metrics. You were talking about data (the facts about us) and now you're talking about metrics (things you can count). Facebook likes, are a measure of engagement and is somewhat different than just data about us.
own a dog or a cat or a ferret or a rabbit,
cute
Even self-published authors have seen their sales jump [16] after uploading their books on Wattled.
same as above comment
With its users scattered across 200 countries and its active cultivation of users from the developing world, Wattpad is more Facebook than Kobo and having received successive infusions of venture capital worth $17.3 million in 2012 and $46 million in 2014, it is more a cash-rich company than a start-up experiment [14].
This is more interesting than the first half of the essay. It goes to the heart of what you said the essay was going to be about, and it would have been great to see earlier in the piece.
Philippines than in North America. Next to the United States, Wattpad’s largest user base resides in the Philippines.
this came out of nowhere
Fan-made book trailers
linking examples of these, or embedding them in the text would have been nice here.
Commons-based peer production
way to bring in the course readings!
shafts directed against Wattpad
examples? citations needed.
These concerns are not without substance.
You are devoting too much of the essay in rehashing the discussions for and against Wattpad and on the characteristics of the platform instead of presenting an interesting analysis or perspective.
That Wattpad literature abounds in but fails to extend beyond fan fiction is the general refrain.
citation needed.
Perhaps,
Perhaps?
In this paper, I will try to examine how Wattpad, an online reading platform, has built a global community of over 30 million readers
Good to get that out of the way quickly, but a more interesting opening/hook would have been nice.
Consider the curious case of Anna Todd. In March, 2014, twenty five year old Todd uploaded one of the last few chapters of After, her Wattpad novel which would soon turn her into the cynosure of the publishing world. Within 13 seconds of the upload, comments started pouring in. In the next 24 hours, Anna received close to 10,000 notifications. According to Wattpad’s metrics, After has been read over 299 million times [1] by just under 10 million unique readers [2]. Some weeks later, she signed a six figure contract with Simon & Schuster who published it in paperback [3]. Later, Paramount Pictures acquired screen rights [4] for the book.
This is a better opening paragraph.
There are two things, among others, to take away from this brief anecdote. The first being Wattpad’s astonishing ability to forge such a massive readership and the second—the serialization of the story as opposed to uploading it in its entirety.
wait. Neither of these things are obviously linked to what you said this paper was going to be about. I assume you will make the connection, but as a reader, I am now finding myself with the third unconnected paragraph in a row.
It is my firm belief
Just because your belief is firm, it does not make it any more true.
might actually promote sales by amplifying the power of personal recommendations through online channels.
but if my personal recommendation comes with a free copy of the book, does that not take away the economic value of the personal recommendation? I think that is Shatkin's point.
I am arguing in favour of the open web and the free access, use and exchange of information
on philosophical grounds?
off-putting inconvenience for legitimate book buyers
You haven't put forward a case arguing why this is the case yet.
This is yet another (big) reason for publishers to free themselves from the enslavement of DRM.
A necessary corollary from the previous point? I think you just argued a good case for the dependence on the platforms, but it does not necessarily follow that it is bad for publishers to have a dependence on platforms (something akin to a symbiotic relationship).
There is a wealth of online resources and tools that allow you to strip DRM from your ebooks without much effort. For instance, just to mention a few examples, Gizmodo has published a video tutorial on how to remove DRM from your Kindle ebooks, and Apprentice Alf’s blog offers you a complete guide on ebook DRM removal. Even the well-respected magazine Wired devoted an entire article to the topic. In addition, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology enables anyone to extract text from scanned images of printed pages, thus making it virtually impossible to prevent pirated copies from being made (and circulated
All of this is here to make a simple point: DRM is extremely easy to circumvent. This is an important point in your argument, but does it need an entire paragraph? Probably not. Stating this and offering a single example would probably suffice, with references to other examples of how it is done.
Here is the lesson the die-hard DRM defenders must learn: locking your readers in to a single platform/device and supplier will only result in frustrating them and, in the worst case scenario, spurring them to seek other, unorthodox ways to get their books.
This sentence stands out as being in a different voice than the rest of the essay so far.
CITATIONS
use same styling as you do below for "Works Cited"
DRM: Debunking Resilient Myths
This is an abrupt transition.Why do I need to know about the myths? How do they relate to the position you're taking?
[1],
this should be linked.
rather than reducing piracy, DRM has hurt legitimate consumers by restricting their freedom to access and use purchased digital goods however, whenever and wherever they wish.
This is at the heart of the question you are taking a position on. A citation is needed to substantiate your point.
respects.
citation needed. Whenever you say things like "industry experts have long observed" you have to point to some of them.
publishers and e-book distributors should abandon DRM altogether precisely because intellectual property matters and needs to be protected in a way that these systems fail to do
strong position and well articulated.
both platforms have their positive and negative consequences on academic learning and social interaction
it seems you mostly focused on the negative of digital
has a negative impact on a person’s health, alertness, and the circadian clock which synchronizes the daily rhythm of sleep
That is why I use FLUX. https://justgetflux.com/
proves
again
In the earlier days, friends and family met to discuss a particular book and even attempted to answer some confusing questions. This made academic discussions more effective through the sharing of thoughts and ideas. B
this is all a little vague
Undeniable of the fact that
it is undeniable that
Paper tends to speak more to our emotions and intellect than the screen does. Are we at risk for being exposed to these electronic devices?
These are three studies that focus on one type of learning. You have to be careful when you do this, as it is often easy to find a few studies that argue almost any point. I realize it is a short essay, so there isn't room for a full literature review, but you do have to be careful not to present a couple of studies as definitive proof that something is a certain way.
prove
you meant 'proof', but same note as above.
proved
showed. No study really ever proves such things.
academic learning, social interaction and human health, based on current research findings.
Sounds great. I'm intrigued. You found an interesting angle to an otherwise overplayed topic.
the promise of the app is far greater than the promise of fixed layout ePubs.
this warrants further exploration. It would have made a better first half of the essay, arguing the importance of magazine apps and leading to why Adobe's choice is bad for magazines, even if it is good for Adobe.
middle-child who never found his potential
hey! I'm a middle child! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2079636/Middle-children-MORE-successful-So-true-family.html
customers expect to pay for content in the iBooks store
an interesting and important distinction. Although magazines would probably rather have the choice instead of having their hand forced by the technology available to them.
The elimination of the Single Edition option is a big blow to small independent publishers who are not willing or able to sign onto Adobe’s more expensive Digital Publisher options,”
We are exactly halfway through the essay and we finally get the first glimpse of why this topic should be of interest to us.
When Adobe rolled out Single Edition in 2011, launching a single app came with the price tag of $395—expensive, but manageable. Then, in 2012, Adobe rolled Single Edition in with their $50 per month Creative Cloud subscriptions targeting small to mid-size publishers. This subscription provided access to Adobe apps and by extension to DPS Single Edition. Subscribers were able to build an unlimited number of apps for the Apple App Store through this subscription level with certain limitations, one being that these apps were published as standalone apps without subscription capabilities, meaning that they weren’t able to become part of the Newsstand. This was an obvious disadvantage, but again, manageable.
At this point I am starting to get curious where you are going with the essay. This is all an account of the what happened—background—but your ideas haven't started flowing.