This is fun—a spirited debate on the future the of the book, complete with one brave soul, Richard Nash at Soft Skull Press, telling of "the recent acquisition of my company by Luddites who will never read this comment." Hence "I’m temporarily all talk and no action." The Luds are apparently from Winton, Shoemaker & Co. LLC, and I hope they’ll listen to him. [Update, June 24, 2008: Richard has e-mailed me that the his earlier remarks about Winton were "a wee bit overhasty and unfair. They’ve had a lot to deal with in helping save my company in the first place." All along I recognized Richard’s good intentions, and I hope that Winton will as well.]
But the real news here is the reaction to a long, multi-part manifesto that Sara Lloyd at Pan Macmillan wrote on the importance of search engines, crowd sourcing and the rest for publishers—in an era when so many readers are looking for facts and snippets, rather than entire books. She isn’t calling for the end of the book, just openness to alternatives and for making books more open to the Net at large and to each other. I’d go along with that, especially if a TeleRead-style approach existed with links that truly were permanent.
No, John: More opportunity here than doom IF publishers are clueful
Even with Lloyd’s qualification, however, John Rivers, over at the lively Fifth Estate blog run out of HarperCollins UK’s Press Books group, feels compelled to disagree. He writes that "the destruction of the singular book, the singular author and the singular publisher is by no means as guaranteed as the doomsayers believe."
Among many other points, Rivers complains that "The manifesto seems to suggest that content can still originate from authors while at the same time forecasting the death of the single unit book. Well, surely the author will have something to say about this? You don’t spend years lovingly crafting your masterpiece only to have others change it into something they prefer. Also notice she uses the word ‘hope’, it’s all so gloomily prophetic!" But wait! I’d actually see opportunity.
In other words, if the links are permanent and the medium is trustworthy, why can’t your masterpiece link to others to draw in their wisdom in context? I don’t see this for fiction, but nonfiction is a different story. Someday, I hope, many kinds of books will be like blog posts and will be regarded as problematic if they do not contain links to back up their arguments.
Painting & graphic arts experience should be considered there: what about ‘moral rights’ and ir-respectful intrusions of innovative artists upon monuments of culture such as da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, e.g.?
Meanwhile, I’d fain militate for technological means of warning (but not compelling) means for threshold trespassing against what was author’s intention while creating the original work of art.
Any publishing involves ‘reader”s freedom of re-using what has been forwarded to him. That’s part of the deal — and continuing life, as far as I can feel it. Warnings about limits could be issued, though. Don’t you think so?
[btw: nice idea to have the ‘comment preview’ made automatic! Great!]