(2008-09-06) Stein Unified Ebook Theory

Bob Stein (IFBook) gives his macro current thinking on the EBook future (Information Ecosystem Roadmap). I haven't published anything for nearly twelve years because, frankly, I didn't have a model that made any sense to me.

• The most important thing my colleagues and I have learned during our experiments with networked books over the past few years is that as discourse moves off the page onto the network, the social aspects are revealed in sometimes startling clarity. These exchanges move from background to foreground, a transition that has dramatic implications. (Social Media)

• a history book represents a synthesis of an author's reading of original source documents, the works of other historians and conversations with colleagues... Our hope was to engage readers with the author's conclusions at a deeper, more satisfying level... A continuously evolving text, as the authors add new findings in their work and engage in back and forth with "readers" who have begun to learn history by "doing history", and have begun both to question the authors' conclusions and to suggest new sources and alternative syntheses.

• Locating discourse in a dynamic network doesn't erase the distinction between authors and readers, but it significantly flattens the traditional perceived hierarchy.

• The key element running through all these possibilities is the author's commitment to engage directly with readers. If the print author's commitment has been to engage with a particular subject matter on behalf of her readers, in the era of the network that shifts to a commitment to engage with readers in the context of a particular subject.

• Readers will not have to take on direct responsibility for the integrity of the content (as they do in wikipedia); hopefully they will provide oversight through their comments and participation, but the model can absorb a broad range of reader abilities and commitment.

• An old-style formulation might be that t publishers and editors serve the packaging and distribution of authors' ideas. A new formulation might be that publishers and editors contribute to building a community that involves an author and a group of readers who are exploring a subject... The editor of the future is increasingly a producer... Successful publishers will build brands around curatorial and community building know-how AND be really good at designing and developing the robust technical infrastructures that underlie a complex range of user experiences. (Virtual Community)

• People will buy subscriptions to works, to publishers, or to channels that aggregate works from different publishers. People might purchase access to specific titles for specific periods of time. We might see tiered access, where something is free in "read-only" form, but publishers charge for the links that take you OUT of the document or INTO the community. (Business Model)

• The ideas above seem to apply equally well to all genres -- whether textbooks, history, self-help, cookbooks, business or fiction -- particularly as the model expands to include the more complex arena of interactive narrative.

• "surely, you are not talking about Fiction." If by fiction we mean the four-hundred page Novel then the answer is no, but in the long term arc of change i am imagining, novels will not continue to be the dominant form of fiction. My bet now is that to understand where fiction is going we should look at what's happening with "video games." World Of Warcraft... As active participants in this space, the millions of player/readers do not merely watch or read the unfolding narrative, they are constructing it as they play. (MMORPG)

• A corollary of the foregrounding of the social relations of reading and writing is that we are going to see the emergence of celebrity editors and readers who are valued for their contributions to a work. (User Generated Content)

• Books can be imagined as channels, especially when they "gather" other books around them. Consider, for example, the CommunistManifesto or the Bible as core works that inspire endless other works and commentary -- a constellation of conversations.

• Successful publishers will develop and/or embrace new ways of visualizing content and the resulting conversations. (Visualization)

• A whole host of bandwidth and hardware issues made the internet unfriendly to Multimedia but those limitations are coming to an end. it's now possible to imagine Weaving the strands back together.

Interesting long comment from Cory Doctorow:

• Today, writers need to master the knack of appearing to be in conversation with a million readers without making any of them feel slighted. John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis are the masters of this... More bluntly: many authors lack the capacity to interact with their audiences. They are grumpy. To publish these authors successfully, publishers will either have to hire "ghost-bloggers" or give them charm lessons. And a lot of those authors will choose a level of participation that is so low it disqualifies them from commercial success.

• Points back to 2007-05-01-DoctorowGameDemocracy