At 197 pages it's a decent undertaking and not to be sneezed at as a freebie, but there is one small snag; there are currently no images in the book. According to the author, the film studios have demanded exorbitantly high fees for publication permission rights to individual images for some of the many films cited in the book- as much as $4500 per image in some cases. These kind of fees do seem to be prohibitively expensive, especially when you consider that the it's an educational publication, and is being issued as not-for profit, non-commercial and download-only. It also seems a little at odds with the fact that similar images can be found freely available all over the internet, largely provided for free by the studios to promote their films. But, the net result is that the book currently appears without these images, but as rights are secured, revised versions will be published.
* UPDATE: The eBook is now available WITH images, as it should be. Go get it now.
This makes the book very much a work in progress but AM+A hopes readers will still enjoy the current version, and thanks them in advance for their patience and for coming back for later versions. Anyone interested can download it directly from the AM+A Website.
For those who have not come across his name before, Aaron Marcus is an American user-interface and information-visualization designer, as well as a computer graphics artist, more information about his work can be found over at the AM+A website.