Really I want my knitting magazines to be delivered this way also.
There's a lot of reasons for this: I am tired of keeping track of paper copies, books and mags take up space I don't have (or else could be using for yarn), and copying patterns (because almost no one is going to carry around a whole book for 2 pages - disregarding the state most working patterns end up in at the other end of a project) is annoying, results in dubious quality prints and means hunting down a scanner/copier if you don't have one readily available.
In short - I want all my patterns on the computer, where I can easily print the bits I need and where they are not taking up shelf space and getting lost underneath yarn or bills or sweaters or something and if there was ever a genre of book that needed to make this transition - knitting & other pattern based craft books would be it.
Interweave made a sort of half-hearted gesture towards this by releasing all their back issues to CD recently. I like this in theory but you can't keep a copy on the computer without imaging the disc, there is no real discount for getting them in a format that is clearly less expensive to produce (not to mention as a subscriber I'm not even getting a discount for SOMETHING I ALREADY OWN) and anyway they didn't go very far into making it computer friendly or updating anything - just scanned everything into PDF (which really - I know at least a quarter of those patterns have had some kind of errata you could have bothered to fix, shame interweave).
They've tried to produce some specially made e-books as well. Where they seem to be falling short is in design and cost. There's an inherent value in something tangible that doesn't translate to e-copy. Its one thing to say... charge me 30% extra to get the e-copy along with my paper subscription, but something else entirely to expect me to pay 100% physical retail for a duplicate or worse yet, to pay more for the electronic version than I would a paper copy (I'm not going to point the finger to the thing that did that. If you saw it you know what it was and how ridiculous the pricing was for it).
Point being - I've been disappointed with the efforts so far.
There are exceptions. A lot of individual designers have produced outstanding downloads of their work on ravelry. I'd like to see more collected pattern booklets, but the overall quality of what I've bought there has been high. Some of the European magazines seem to be more on the ball as well, and though I don't read them as often its nice to know that I can get an electronic issue for 8$ online instead of paying 15$ for a paper copy that I might not be able to find locally anyway.
So all that ranting leads to this:
Today I saw the new Cookie A book was out and went to immediately check out the patterns. I love her socks. Would you know it - there is a pdf version available. It costs about 10$ less than the paper copy and its available RIGHT NOW which.. instant gratification is a big part of why electronic product works. Its also available as an ad-on purchase to the physical book for a very reasonable 6$. As far as I'm concerned this is how this kind of option should work.
I, of course, have it on my desktop right now and I'm very impressed. Its pretty (which is always nice) and though about half the patterns are not new, they are all updated with new samples, photos, schematics and charts. The anti-piracy takes the form of an unobtrusive header on each page that has my email and a transaction ID which does a nice job of discouraging passing it around without being out & out obnoxious like most copy-protection.
Props to Cookie A & One Leg Press. This is exactly how you should handle e-copy.
Now I just need to pick a sock to cast on.
*Besides the Cookie A book, this week we got the Stephen West booklet in at the shop and it comes with a code that lets you download an electronic version for free through ravelry. That's another great thing to see. Bravo.
