npr_logo_thumb[1] The death of the e-book has gone meta.

NPR mentions a new children’s book about books, where one character is puzzled by another character reading this dull paper construct that you can’t “scroll down” or “blog with”.

Actually, this book is brought up as an anecdote to lead into yet another article on the death of the book (ho hum!), but it is at least fairly well-researched, and suggests a few alternatives to the black and white, life or death depiction to which many paper book adherents fall prey.

Dan Visel, of the Institute for the Future of the Book, notes that books that are meant to be read will probably end up as e-books, but there are also books that are meant to be seen being read (e.g., political titles such as Going Rogue by Sarah Palin) and those will likely remain around in printed form for quite some time because of their value as a social display.

Savvy publishers, [Visel] says, "should be establishing themselves as brands or curators." And they "could be in the business of providing community to the readers: allowing readers to have conversations with authors or like-minded readers."

The piece also talks about textbooks versus e-textbooks, and Stanford’s new “bookless” physics and engineering library. And also, it turns out that the author of the aforementioned pro-paper children’s book is himself interested in new digital technologies’ potential for storytelling.

The ascendency of the e-book cannot come soon enough, in my opinion. If only so people will stop talking about what will happen to the paper ones.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. “Other types of books are not only meant to be read, but meant to be seen: Like when a New York subway rider whips out a copy of Going Rogue by Sarah Palin.”

    It was only worth reading that NPR piece for that line only.

    But certainly one should be able to get an e-reader (Nook, Kindle, etc.) cover with front and back clear slip-in pouches where one can slip in a copy — printed out on a color printer — of an image of a print version’s dust-jacket.

    One could then whip out anything.

  2. The lurking suggestion here is that a single book title can be sold twice: once as a book reading (screen) and again as a book possession (paper). Publishers must be interested in such a multiplication especially when it indicates a multiplication of markets. One market for the screen book and another for the paper book.

    Can anyone can see a correlation of increase of screen sales with decline of print sales in this? I can’t.

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