nail in the tub
"The announcement this morning of the launch in the UK of a new waterproof laptop looks like another nail in the coffin of the traditional paper book, as the new device at last makes it possible to read a downloaded electronic fiction while relaxing in a hot bath."
if:book
It is silly enough to define the network book as a paper book mime. But to define the network book as bathtub and beach ready is doubly lost. But suggestive. Who would prefer a bath or beach online? And does time at the screen subtract from existence?
For a decade hand held reading devices have been introduced to simulate paper books. These e-book readers are continuously taking off, but have not yet found their market. Perhaps the drag on their acceptance is the obvious one. Perhaps the e-book is frustrated precisely because it attempts to simulate the paper book.
The model for the electronic reader and networked book is elsewhere as the cell phone and distinctive formats of on-line discussion have long demonstrated. It appears that connectivity will always supersede content in screen delivery. And doubly wrong is the premise that the e-book reading is linked with paper book reading and that growth of one will be at the expense of the other.
Certainly the physical book is in a new and lively competition for market and reader attention but the real spoiler for the future of the paper book is not book mimicry on a screen. The much more serious threat is faulty "on-demand" production of the book itself. Poor quality subtracts directly from efficiencies that have long enabled the success of the physical book.
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i-book
"What Gutenberg’s press did for Europe in the 15th century digitization the Espresso Book Machine will do for the world tomorrow. Library quality paperbacks at low cost, identical to factory made books, printed direct from digital file for the reader in minutes, serving a radically decentralized world-wide multilingual marketplace."
Lightning Source is now backing Jason Epstein's Expresso Book Machine
EBM. This is the Kindle Store for real books. Which surge, the e-book or the i-book (instant book), will prove the concept of the future of the book?
text book
The Changing Book monograph is out from Haworth Press. Filled with eighteen engaging essays and exemplifying new levels of insipid "demand" production, the wild and unruly future for the physical book is well presented. This book provides the souvenir of a wide ranging
UI conference on the future of the physical book, summer of 2005.
Happily, I was unable to find any online presence for this publcation.
e-book surge
Suddenly there are innumerable hand-held devices designed for book reading. This reflects a new momentum of development. Now will confirmation of wide adoption follow and if so for what reading functionalities really? The surge of GPS applications for cell-phones may be more relevant than new titles for Kindle.
booklab blog
Whatever the functionalities, increasing screen reading has not been linked to print decline. U.S. publishers had net sales of $25 billion in 2007; a 3.2 percent increase from 2006 with a compound growth rate of 2.5 percent per year since 2002.
publishers' blog
e-book manuscript
"Random's announcement follows on the heels of similar initiatives at other big trade houses, all of whom are buying Sony's e-book readers for their sales, marketing and editorial staffs in order to reduce paper waste and expense, to expedite a manuscript's passage through various hands and departments, and to lighten the bags of employees used to carrying three or four heavy piles of paper every day."
Publishers' Weekly
The manuscript stage of book production encompasses many processes. With electronic format and screen delivery it is possible that these processes can be continued following publication and the work will be ever changing. The other option would be production of works that will not change following publication.
The dynamic of such choice is sustained by technology; either continued change or un-change in the context of change. The crossovers positions between paper and screen continue to change as well. Manuscript, print and network stages are open to interplay, but the function of each persists. And it isn't an issue if the manuscript is created by one person or a Wiki coalition. All publications are resolved from relative uncertainty to relative stability
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