At the recent IPMS/USA Region 2 Convention in Roanoke, I had a wonderful opportunity to speak with Bert Kinsey, the publisher of the famed ‘Detail and Scale’ series of (primarily) aircraft detail & history monographs.  Over the years, the series has gone from a smallish pamphlet format printed on heavy paper stock to a full size format of slick paper with high quality, mixed full color/ B&W images.  Now, with his ‘ebook’ on the F3H ‘Demon’, he is taking the next logical step and going full ‘digital’.  He demonstrated it to me on a Kindle (will be available in iBooks format also), explaining how the large resolution images could be “zoomed” for better viewing – as could the text, which is certainly a boon for guys with ‘older’ eyes like me – plus the obvious portability of an e-publication.

Consider this: I have several full size filing cabinets (and a couple of bookcases) stuffed with paper-based references (soft-back books, magazines, etc.) that would, if digitized, fit into one small corner of a current ‘hard drive’.  If all of one’s personal library were fully indexed and available to bring up on a ‘screen’ of one’s choice at a moment’s notice, imagine the saving in time finding and accessing material for a modeling project.  Of course, such capability comes with a price in hardware, internet services (and a power bill) but if you’re reading this, you probably already have that covered.  All you may still need is an ebook reader, unless D&S is to provide a computer compatible format (lots of technical challenges to protect copyright with standalone file formats like PDF.)  As such, Bert’s first eBook is part of the ‘charge’ into the publishing future – really the “now” (which also means Dr. Who should also be appearing any time now…)  More information – and a bit of demonstration – on the release (apparently not quite out yet…) can be found at:

http://www.detailandscale.com/