The Future of Book Culture

Kindle and snack culture: it seems that connectivity fosters speed-dating… at least in this case!
See here
It is notable that is exactly the contrary of what Jeff Bezos says in his lettor to investors

Scholastic, the publisher of Harry Potter, is going to launch on tuesday 9th Sept, this new series.
Site here.
The project, aimed at childrens aged 8-12 seems interesting and may result in a shift in children book publishing.
It looks like it will have many connection between the web and the book, a prize, card and an online game…but, if I’m not wrong, no ebook edition!
David Levithan, an executive editorial director at Scholastic as reported by NYT:
“We want to go where the kids are and really be part of their complete world, rather than going to one aspect of their world. We talk of it as being subversively educational.”
Not properly an understatement ….

PAUL-FRANÇOIS FOURNIER, an executive at France Télécom in Paris, thinks he may have found a way to help revive the ailing newspaper industry. It comes in a black, plastic, rectangular box with a screen the size of a sheet of paper.

The article on NYT 21st July files/2008/07/lemonde.jpg’ alt=’lemonde.jpg’ />

Wouldn’t it be great if books could be freed from their restrictive old dustjackets and people could download only the bits of them they want and carry whole libraries of these bits on their iPhones and “experience” – or even shuffle – this “content” whenever and wherever they want? As Gomez says, “Generation Download has no need to go to record stores. Software and websites bring the record stores to them. With their headphones always on, and an electronic device in each hand, there’s no need to leave the house in order to escape their parents; they can still stare into their uneaten vegetables at the dinner table and still be in their own digital world.”
Is it really like this? there is something out there called “Generation Download” that does, like, everything on a computer, and will “ditch the hardback and head over to Facebook” because books are, like, not interactive enough, and too long, and have, like, “boring bits”, but how big is this “Generation Download”? Maybe this is still a small “élite”, but something is changing in the publishing landscape anyway.
In Print Is Dead, Jeff Gomez explains how authors, producers, distributors, and readers must not only acknowledge these changes, but drive digital book creation, standards, storage, and delivery as the first truly transformational thing to happen in the world of words since the printing press.

Visit his website www.printisdeadblog.com.

Un rapido post, in italiano…. tanto per far sapere che non siamo morti! Il libro “Oltre il libro elettronico. Il futuro dell’editoria libraria” è quasi pronto. Nei prossimi post le prime anticipazioni.
In questo periodo è nato nel frattempo NuMedia Biosun’osservatorio sui nuovi media della Bicocca a cui collaboro. L’osservatorio sta svolgendo una ampia ricerca sulla dieta mediale dei giovani delle università milanesi, la cui prima parte è rappresentata da una survey. Un primo dato interessante che emerge è questo:

il 46,6% legge meno di 5 libri l’anno, il 12,3 non ne legge nessuno (eccetto quelli di studio), mentre più del 95% usa abitualmente un pc

I nostri “cari” in tutti i sensi, almeno per il momento, lettori e-ink Iliad e Cybook possono quindi avere un futuro!

Many thanks to Antonio for pointing this out!

The Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO and founder, letter to the investor is entirely dedicated to Kindle, and this is a big news “per se”. I completely agree with Antonio’s comments on this letter and I’m sure Kindle and E-ink technology will be one of the major innovations in the book industry for many years to come.

Bezos (who cites Mcluhan here at the beginning….) is sure that Kindle will revert the “snackculture” trend, initiated by cell phones and so on…. I wish a very great success to Kindle, but I’m not so sure that younger generations will ever be back to longer attention spans… different media coexists for quite long periods but in the long term….

here’s an excerpt form Bezos letter:

“We humans co-evolve with our tools. We change our tools, and then our tools change us. Writing, invented
thousands of years ago, is a grand whopper of a tool, and I have no doubt that it changed us dramatically. Five
hundred years ago, Gutenberg’s invention led to a significant step-change in the cost of books. Physical books
ushered in a new way of collaborating and learning. Lately, networked tools such as desktop computers, laptops,
cell phones and PDAs have changed us too. They’ve shifted us more toward information snacking, and I would
argue toward shorter attention spans.”

First post is a citation from a similar blog, from Jeff Gomez Blog about his book “print is dead”:

“In Paris I was able to find wireless networks pretty much everywhere, which allowed me to find our exact location on my iPod Touch (not to mention check e-mail and read The New York Times). But in Milan and Venice, I came across practically no wireless networks, and our hosts in Milan had only limited access to the Internet via a pay-as-you-go model.

While the Italians didn’t seem very wired in term of the Internet, on a train trip from Venice to Milan I was sitting next to a teenage girl who spent the entire two hour trip glued to her cell phone. She used it non-stop to either text, talk, or play games. American teens are probably also this wired, and I just haven’t sat next to one for any appreciable amount of time. Still, I was pretty impressed with the amount of time this teenager spent using her phone. Also, while the rest of us in the six-person compartment read or listened to music, the only thing the teenager’s eyes were glued to was the screen of her phone.”

it is sadly true. The good thing is that we’re number 1 in cell phones…..

I’ll post in the next days about the book we’re preparing “oltre il libro elettronico”