futureofthebook.com

future…douper

Study of the future is just an engaging way of doing history. The future of the book, for example, is really media history of the 21st century. The fun aspect is that while methods of history study apply, the specialist also gets to live through the era. This double dynamic is something exclusive to futurist investigation.

So futurist study entails an oddness in routine historical methods such as archeology, documentary research, oral testimony, and impartial interpretation. While students of the 18th century or 19th can assemble evidences and interpretations without any need to live in the era, the futurist must work in the midst of history.

This queasy circumstance makes futurism un-academic when it is really ur-academic.

i.p.r. fotb

Today was another call-in show on the future of the book. Iowa Public Radio, “The Exchange”, had a one hour program with an independent book store manager, a university publisher and a library conservator. We all arrived dumbfounded that we were to talk about the death of the book. Without any prompting we all confirmed the prospects for the print book and, added to that, prospects for screen delivered books. The prospects for either inter-plays with prospects for the other and both are surging.

who is the zombie?

if:book blog of the FotB dot org has risen from the crypt to send print publishers to the hospice but print is still lingering. The only sign of exclusive migration to the screen is a small niche of addictive romance. All other screen books have print equivalents while about 50% of new publications are exclusive to print.

The poor publishers are greatly tried by this. Now they must sell each of their products, each of their titles, twice; once to a device owning market and again to a print market. Pathetic publishers with two different markets now for the same product. Adding to their woes, print sales only grow by double digits while screen book sales grow by triple.

Terminal types in desperation have innovated this double sales strategy by clever distinction between book ownership and book reading. Enjoy a book reading on the screen and then another and another. Enjoy book possession with an elegant reading exemplar of the work ready for positioning among others.

Silly, lingering publishers. Meanwhile FotB dot org has only managed two postings this month.

kindle 3

The minutes drag on. Will it prompt it’s own by-line: “Gary’s third Kindle”. How many if any of my previous titles will be displayed? What can I do to regard my three shadow libraries? Stay tuned…

expresso

There are now over forty 2nd generation Expresso machines in service; in book stores, printing companies, university libraries all churning out print books from digital books. This is certainly the back side of the e-book surge. And this Expresso combines print, publish and read on demand.

booklabs

It is probably about 25 years now since the start of BookLab. Craig has adventured across many concepts of fine hand book binding and BookLab has presented these concepts in practice. Let’s get a catalog of the recent retrospective to experience some of the engagement needed to fulfill his visions.

connectivity

Connectivity is associated with live internet display, but it is a useful word and perhaps it deserves some ambiguity of really useful words. At first there is the contrast of connectivity between a reading device with a direct connectivity to the mind and another that intrudes auxiliary transmission, display and de-encryption systems. This is the connectivity of the print book contrasted with the screen book.

There is another kind of connectivity that occurred as we visited near-by Amish farms. The farms have no electricity and yet the families prosper happily and enjoy an intense connectivity. Networks of live display decorate, conflict and fill up every day. These include a rich sense of past and future, a demanding social network with intensive social media and a constant engagement with the two great ecologies of nature and spirit.

One farmer recited a community of people who attended his grandfather’s barn raising, in 1935. Another, on a different farm, recalled his earliest memory when he was prevented from participation in that same event. This is vivid connectivity.

But you can imagine that the Amish must guard every door to prevent use of electricity and internet. That is not so and young people are free to go into town to mingle with the English and connect. What the Amish do manage is the convenience of such electrical connectivity and they guard against any addiction to instant gratification that can distort or damage the other connectivity that they depend on.

future of the book seminar

The first ever credit seminar on the future of the book is about to begin. Tuesdays, Aug 31 to Oct 5, 6 to 8:30 pm, South Conference room, Main Library, University of Iowa

Lesson Plan, session topics,
1. Future of Reading, Aug 31
a. RIT conference
b. affordances of print reading
c. neurology and haptics of reading
d. slow or fast (cross platform) reading
e. tour of bibliography
2. Future of the Book, Sept 7
a. ALA strategic future of print
b. advance of the codex
c. book mimicry of reading devices
d. faculty format survey
e. interdependence of print and screen
f. (guest participation, CBAA Officer)
3. Future of Book Production, Sept 14
a. printing automation, electrostatic
b. image and binding transformation
c. (guest participation, UI Press Specialist)
4. Future of Book Mediation, Sept 21
a. storage, display and life cycle costs
b. academic and commercial views
c. google settlement
d. status of books
e. (guest participation)
5. (optional picnic, Saturday 25)
6. Project work session, Sept 28
7. Project presentations, Oct 5

machine reading

“The historian George Dyson has written that a Google engineer once said to him: “We are not scanning all those books to be read by people.” NYT

The trope of machine reading began with the photocopier. It turned the book up-side down.

print gone in 5 years

Telereaders have projected the disappearance of print books in 5 years. We posted this remark:

You guys are all smoking dirty socks. It is a false correlate to imagine that increasing screen delivery has anything to do with diminishing print delivery. To begin with all screen books have a print version. Even more relevant, screen delivery will compound any number of times without influence of print distribution. Annual print has increased sales consistently for the past eleven years at single digits over a huge installed base. Annual screen delivery has increased from a zero base over the same period. Last year print shot up annually to double digits in part from the new stream of print and publish on demand.

About twenty years ago I was in the back of the room at an ALA “big heads” meeting between research library directors and publishers. One publisher projected that by 2010 only 10% of all publication would be delivered in print (and yet it is still 100%). Ross Atkinson from Cornell immediately jumped up and said that a 10% print titles growth at the rate of increase of the 90’s would project to a doubling of the size of print libraries by 2010….and they would be the real books. That prophesy, based on 10% selection, has come true.

Those projecting the demise of print should watch the exceptionally small niche of books published exclusively for the screen.