Excerpt Marks the Spot: eBook chapter audio excerpt now available
The third installment of the Print is Dead podcast, as part of the book excerpt site, has just been delivered. The podcast features me reading the chapter “eBooks and the Revolution That Didn’t Happen” from the second section of the book, “Totally Wired.”
Here’s a snippet of the chapter:
From the very beginning eBooks faced a steep battle in terms of generating and sustaining consumer interest. They were, after all, a whole new way of doing something that people had been doing fine for five centuries. Everyone learns how to read with physical books, and books have been a constant in society ever since. eBooks in the late 1990s were then the answer to a question no one was yet asking.
You can read the complete chapter here.
Subsribe to the podcast via iTunes, or use the XML feed.
Also, you can listen to the excerpt directly below:
Or else, download the MP3 here.
1 Comment so far
Leave a reply
An easy way to determine the advent and prevalence of the ebook is to consider factors similar to those that determined the advent and prevalence of the codex. In the latter case new writing and reading modes and improved distribution formats were significant. Converging innovations then accelerated the wider adoption of the codex.
Sectarian enclaves of late Antiquity exchanged folded papyrus letters much like exchanges of bloggers today. These were folded into road map impositions and tied together for security and exchanged by the network of Mediterranean navigation. This traffic in folded letters, provided the basis for expansion into folded papyrus codices. Much later the sectarian format was popularized to wider use and wider cultures with the advent of paper and, later still with the advent of printing.
Ebooks are evidently still in their early adoption phase. If they spread beyond the enclave/sectarian stage it is possible that converging innovations not directly related and not yet assured, will take part. Wireless connectivity, geo-positioning and self-publication trends could all play a part. So far it is evident that simple mimicry of legacy book models will not work. It is also apparent that changing formats for listening and viewing are not hard linked with changing reading formats. Add to all this, it is apparent that all the legacy formats of exchange are themselves utilizing digital technologies, especially the print book. For example, formal, commercial publication of wiki content or print-on-demand spin-offs from book imaging, are not out of the question.
It will be fun to discover which tail is wagging the dog in all this.