New technologies are creating new ways of writing and new ways of reading, changing our conception of what constitutes a book. Books and readers have a symbiotic relationship. Readers and writers used to influence each other directly, but over time the relationship became one-way. Readers became passive consumers, separated from the authors by editors and publishing houses. Criticism and feedback became the preserve of the professional commentator, and ordinary readers were excluded.
The Internet has swept all this away. Technology has made it possible for anyone to publish a book, free from editorial restraint and available worldwide. But that same technology has changed the way readers read as well. The modern “book” is just as likely to appear on a handheld screen, and readers no longer just read: the text can be searched, queried, linked, shared, resized, even translated. Books also contain music and video, biographies, photo galleries and suggestions for explorations. But even more than that, readers are becoming involved in the evolution of the book into a new and different product.
Social networking now includes collaborative book creation. This can include editing by online readers (think Wikipedia), community-chosen plot development, mashups from other texts, in-text sponsorship, reversion to earlier drafts and online marginalia. The outputs of blogs, wikis and discussion boards are daily become less distinct from the process of book creation.
And most of this ferment of change is happening outside the formal book economy. Publishers are becoming marginalised and probably will continue to be so. Traditional publishers justified their markups on the basis of superior knowledge and marketing, but the new paradigm publishes everything and lets the most popular rise to the surface, like 50 Shades of Grey. Every book is equally visible on the Internet. The future of book publishing therefore needs the book industry to adapt and adopt as the technology shifts under its feet.
This book sets itself to address these issues, and how to ensure that what is best in literature is not lost. It starts by examining where we are in the intersection of digital and analogue models of writing and reading. It then examines the digital environment of reading, new business models governing “free” and low cost books, and the impact of borderless access to writings. The following chapters look at the socialisation of book production: social networking, review sites, and the personalisation of the presentation, content and criticism. Then there is the creation of folksonomies, clouds of semantic tags, index terms and recommendations by readers which can have a huge influence on finding and selecting books.
The book concludes by offering a reflection on what this all means for publishing, literature, authors and readers – and where the whole process is likely to go. This work is highly recommended for anyone interesting in the future of the communication of ideas.
