Reinventing the Book in the Age of the Web - O'Reilly Radar - The Diigo Meta page

• 15 Jun 09
  

  Driessen Samuel

  paperdigital book epaper

• 07 May 09
  

  Jorge Acosta

  Multiple books ways in the Ages of the Web | Las múltiples formas del libro en la Era de la Web

  web2.0 twitter eBooks TimO'Reilly

• 04 May 09
  

  sherihuhn1 Huhn

  twitter publishing o'reilly books

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  Andrew Murphie

  futureofthebook books differentialmedia

• 01 May 09
  

  Don
• 30 Apr 09
  

  Martin Lindner

  But simply putting books onto electronic devices is only the beginning. As I've said for years, that's a lot like pointing a camera at a stage play, and calling it a movie. Yes, that's pretty much what they did in many early movies, but eventually, the to

  ebook skyreading skywriting twitter_book _ebook deli

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  Ognyan Kulev
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  Takuya Homma
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  Ognjen Strpić

  books publishing technology

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  Of course, modularity isn't the only thing that publishers can learn from new media. The web itself, full of links to sources, opposing or supporting points of view, multimedia, and reader commentary, provides countless lessons about how books need to cha

  e-books twitter

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  James Neal

  twitter O'Reilly publishing books

• 29 Apr 09
  

  Damon Snyder

  twitter

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  Lisa Spiro

  Main point: the book needs to be re-engineered for the web, taking advantage of the network (cf IfBook)
  
  Interesting point: "As wikipedia has demonstrated, collaboration is easiest when documents are constructed using a modular architecture."
  
  Favorite comment: "(Incidentally, I hate the word "ebook". It's like calling a car a "gashorse".)"

  publishing ebooks cultural collaboration

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  C. S. Soares
  • And of course, there's Stanza, an open ebook platform for the iPhone, which has been downloaded more than a million times (and now has been bought by Amazon.)
  • But simply putting books onto electronic devices is only the beginning
  • 61 more annotations...
  • • Aside: Bruce Sterling just published an amazing rant on this topic - how the context of pulp magazines shaped the content of early science-fiction.
    • we've long been interested in exploring how the online medium changes the presentation, narrative and structure of the book
    • Now, you might ask, how is a book authored in powerpoint a web publishing experiment? I
    • Most books still use the old model of a sustained narrative as their organizational principle
    • we've used a web-like model of standalone pages, each of which can be read alone
    • Because the basics are so easy, there's no need to repeat them, as so many technical books do
    • Instead, we can rely on the reader to provide (much of) the implicit narrative framework
    • jump right to points that they might not have thought about.
    • Perhaps the biggest driver, though, was the need for speed.
    • We couldn't imagine writing a book about twitter that wouldn't be immediately out of date, because there are so many new applications appearing daily, and the zeitgeist of twitter best practices is evolving equally quickly
    • Again, modular structure helps, since new pages can be inserted without any need to reflow the entire document.
    • The Twitter Book with each new printing
    • The idea to write the book in powerpoint came to me while I was thinking about how quickly I write a new talk: I generally use pictures as visual bullets
    • I know what I want to talk about when I see each picture. And pictures are a memorable, entertaining way to tell a story.
    • I realized, was to write down some notes equivalent to what I'd be saying if I were giving this as a talk.
    • But even there, we saw real benefit in the format of the book
    • collaboration is easiest when documents are constructed using a modular architecture
    • much easier to work on things in standalone units that share a common, "interoperable" format.
    • I first explored this modular approach to the book in Unix Power Tools, a book I wrote in 1993 with the explicit goal of emulating the hypertext style of the web in a print book
    • In online versions such as the one at Safari books online, the cross references are expressed as real hyperlinks.
    • In 2003,  Dale Dougherty and  Rael Dornfest developed the Hacks series, another approach to books as collections of loosely-related pages
    • The web itself, full of links to sources, opposing or supporting points of view, multimedia, and reader commentary, provides countless lessons about how books need to change when they move online. Crowdsourcing likewise
    • Of course, modularity isn't the only thing that publishers can learn from new media.
    • It's just that when we turn to ebooks, we haven't realized that we need to turn footnotes and bibliographies into live links
    • how many publishers write their own books?
    • publishers for years have built effective business processes to discover and promote the talents of those they discover in the wider world!
    • How do we use the net to find new talent, and once we find it, help to amplify it?
    • I don't exempt O'Reilly from that criticism. While we've done many pioneering projects, we haven't fully lived up to our own vision of the ebook of the future.
    • Many of the products that result won't look like books at all.
    • World of Warcraft is the new immersive fantasy novel
    • check in with HubSpot to learn the latest on their free Twitter Grader
    • One of the strengths of a printed book as opposed to a web page is actually the absence of links and collaborative noise
    • If I am listening to one of the pieces from Bach's art of fugue, I don't want to be interrupted with references to other Bach works
    • I want the pure experience
    • A book represents a clear lengthy line of thought from a single person uninterrupted
    • So in some ways I shy away from wanting to move books and publishing into the digital arena if there are too many features and options thrown in
    • A work of fiction - forget it; I want the pure text.
    • I don't really see any thing that could not have been published in PDF. Is just having power point slides embracing the medium?
    • To me, the reason people will buy a book rather than use free resources on the web is that they want a cohesive experience, and the narrative is definitely one way to provide this
    • Even in fiction, it's sometimes helpful to get context
    • No one is suggesting links within music
    • that there are styles of reading
    • There was a great piece recently about the decline of newspapers
    • The episodic format we chose is matched to the subject matter, just as your sustained narrative is matched to the subject matter of your superb book. (Disclosure: I am the publisher :-)
    • My point was that publishers need to think more broadly about what constitutes a book, and what constitutes reading, in the age of the web.
    • maybe the author should have the authority to limit peripheral linkage and commentary if they want; in other words, there are user requirements on several sides of this, not just the reader; it should all be considered.
    • because one of the points I'm making is that reading a book is in many cases a linear experience
    • What you have done with the Twitter book is remarkable. Kathy Sierra also did something very remarkable a few years ago with the "Head First" approach.
    • "Many of the products that result won't look like books at all."
    • "simply putting books onto electronic devices is only the beginning"
    • trying to design the "book of the future" starting from the "book of today" is an almost impossible endeavour
    • True innovation here will mean breaking molds in many areas at once: content creation, distribution channels, business model
    • Book publishers face exceptional challenges in creating this new breed of products. If your knowledge, experience and welfare are rooted in the printed book - both at a corporate and individual level - it is very hard to create a truly innovative product
    • Incidentally, I hate the word "ebook". It's like calling a car a "gashorse".
    • I wrote a short IT/business parable earier this year (think "who moved my software development team" - you can read it at tinyurl.com/RocksIntoGold if you've got 30 minutes to spare
    • Second, SlideShare was a very effective way of promoting the book - it's far easier to send a link to slideshare than to send a pdf. Plus once people started to read it the book got featured on SlideShare's front page.
    • As a writer of high-tech tips books (iPod For Dummies, etc.), I also took an unusual approach with e-book publishing, with my iPhone app (Tony's Tips for iPhone Users).
    • Authors should take every opportunity to find ways to publish content in a way that is more economically viable (not to mention green) -- not just to jettison paper and the costs of distribution, but to sell directly to readers if possible, and if possible establish direct feedback loops with their readers.
    • it is very important to continually update the content.
    • As for "static" or linear narrative, I love Stanza and I'm in the midst of reading Moby Dick from beginning to end, but... it lacks footnotes and illustrations!
    • I always found it disappointing that no one was creating books specifically for an electronic format.
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  Bill Wolff

  twitter book future of book tim o'reilly o'reilly powerpoint

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  James Schirmer

  publishing book books twitter web future innovation

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