Preface
I’ve been exploring the potential of “new media” for nearly thirty years. There was an important aha moment early on when I was trying to understand the essential nature of books as a medium. The breakthrough came when i stopped thinking about the physical form or content of books and focused instead on how they are used. At that time print was unique compared to other media, in terms of giving its users complete control of the sequence and pace at which they accessed the contents. The ability to re-read a paragraph until it’s understood, to flip back and forth almost instantly between passages, to stop and write in the margins, or just think - this affordance of reflection (in a relatively inexpensive portable package) was the key to understanding why books have been such a powerful vehicle for moving ideas across space and time. I started calling books user-driven media - in contrast to movies, radio, and television, which at the time were producer-driven. Once microprocessors were integrated into audio and video devices, I reasoned, this distinction would disappear. However – and this is crucial – back in 1981 I also reasoned that its permanence was another important defining aspect of a book. The book of the future would be just like the book of the past, except that it might contain audio and video on its frozen “pages.” This was the videodisc/cdrom era of electronic publishing.
The emergence of the web turned this vision of the book of the future as a solid, albeit multimedia object completely upside down and inside out. Multimedia is engaging, especially in a format that encourages reflection, but locating discourse inside of a dynamic network promises even more profound changes Reading and writing have always been social activities, but that fact tends to be obscured by the medium of print. We grew up with images of the solitary reader curled up in a chair or under a tree and the writer alone in his garret. 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.
So…
I haven’t published anything for nearly twelve years because, frankly, I didn’t have a model that made any sense to me. One day when I was walking around the streets of London I suddenly I realized I did have a model. I jokingly labeled my little conceptual breakthrough “a unified field theory of publishing,” but the more I think about it, the more apt that sounds, because getting here has involved understanding how a number of different aspects both compliment and contradict each other to make up a dynamic whole. I’m excited about this because for the first time the whole hangs together for me. I hope it will for you too. if not, please say where the model breaks, or which parts need deepening, fixing or wholesale reconsideration.
key questions a unified field theory has to answer:
- What are the characteristics of a successful author in the era of the digital network?
- Ditto for readers: how do you account for the range of behaviors that comprise reading in the era of the digital network?
- What is the role of the publisher and the editor?
- What is the relationship between the professional (author) and the amateur (reader)?
- Do the answers to 1-4 afford a viable economic model?
so how exactly did i get here?
I was thinking about Who Built America, a 1993 Voyager cd-rom based on a wonderful 2-volume history originally published by Knopf. In a lively back and forth with the book’s authors over the course of a year, we tried to understand the potential of an electronic edition. Our conceptual breakthrough came when we started thinking about process – that a history book represents a synthesis of an author’s reading of original source documents, the works of other historians and conversations with colleagues. So we added hundreds of historical documents – text, pictures, audio, video – to the cd-rom edition, woven into dozens of “excursions” distributed throughout the text. Our hope was to engage readers with the author’s conclusions at a deeper, more satisfying level. That day in London, as I thought about how this might occur in the context of a dynamic network (rather than a frozen cd-rom), there seemed to be an explosion of new possibilities. Here are just a few:
- Access to source documents can be much more extensive free of the size, space and copyright constraints of cd-rom
- Dynamic comment fields enable classes to have their unique editions, where a lively conversation can take place in the margins.
- 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. Bingo! That last one leads to . . . .
b) Hmmm. On the surface that sounds a lot like a Wikipedia article, in the sense that it’s always in process and consideration of the the back and forth is crucial to making sense of the whole. However it’s also different, because a defining aspect of the Wikipedia is that once an article is started, there is no special, ongoing role accorded to the the person who initiated it or tends it over time. And that’s definitely not what I’m talking about here. Locating discourse in a dynamic network doesn’t erase the distinction between authors and readers, but it significantly flattens the traditional perceived hierarchy. Ever since we published Ken Wark’s Gamer Theory I’ve tended to think of the author of a networked book as a leader of a group effort, similar in many respects to the role of a professor in a seminar. The professor has presumably set the topic and likely knows more about it than the other participants, but her role is to lead the group in a combined effort to synthesize and extend knowledge. This is not to suggest that one size will fit all authors, especially during this period of experimentation and transition. Some authors will want to lay down a completed text for discussion; others may want to put up drafts in the anticipation of substantial re-writing based on reader input. Other “authors’ may be more comfortable setting the terms and boundaries of the subject and allowing others to participate directly in the writing . . . .
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.
c) As networked books evolve, readers will increasingly see themselves as participants in a social process. As with authors, especially in what is likely to be a long transitional period, we will see many levels of (reader) engagement – from the simple acknowledgement of the presence of others presence to very active engagement with authors and fellow readers..
(an anecdotal report regarding reading in the networked era)
A mother in London recently described her ten-year old boy’s reading behavior: “He’ll be reading a (printed) book. He’ll put the book down and go to the book’s website. Then, he’ll check what other readers are writing in the forums, and maybe leave a message himself, then return to the book. He’ll put the book down again and google a query that’s occurred to him.” I’d like to suggest that we change our description of reading to include the full range of these activities, not just time spent looking at the printed page.
continuing…
d) One thing i particularly like about this view of the author is that it resolves the professional/amateur contradiction. It doesn’t suggest a flat equality between all potential participants; on the contrary it acknowledges that the author brings an accepted expertise in the subject AND the willingness/ability to work with the community that gathers around. 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
e) Once we acknowledge the possibility of a flatter hierarchy that displaces the writer from the center or from the top of the food chain and moves the reader into a space of parallel importance and consideration -? i.e. once we acknowledge the intrinsic relationship between reading and writing as equally crucial elements of the same equation -? we can begin to redefine the roles of publisher and editor. An old-style formulation might be that 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.
f) So it turns out that far from becoming obsolete, publishers and editors in the networked era have a crucial role to play. The editor of the future is increasingly a producer, a role that includes signing up projects and overseeing all elements of production and distribution, and that of course includes building and nurturing communities of various demographics, size, and shape. 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. [I know I’m using “publisher” to encompass an array of tasks and responsibilities, but I don’t think the short-hand does too much damage to the discussion].
g) Once there are roles for author/reader/editor/publisher, we can begin to assess who adds what kind of value, and when. From there we can begin to develop a business model. My sense is that this transitional period (5, 10, 50 years) will encompass a variety of monetizing schemes. 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. Smart experimenting and careful listening to users/readers/authors will be very important.
h) 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. [Think complex and densely textured online events/games whose authors create worlds in which readers play a role in creating the ongoing narrative, rather than choose- your-own ending stories.]
This is not to say that one size will fit all. For example, different subjects or genres will have different optimal community paradigms – e.g. a real-time multi-player game vs. close readings of historical or philosophical essays. Even within a single genre, it will make a difference whether the community consists of students in the same class or of real-world strangers.
other thoughts/questions
- Authors should be able to choose the level of moderation/participation at which they want to engage; ditto for readers.
- It’s not necessary for ALL projects to take this continuous/never-finished form.
- This applies to all modes of expression, not just text-based. The main distinction of this new model is not type of media but the mechanism of distribution. Something is published when the individual reader/user/viewer determines the timing and mode of interaction with the content and the community Something is broadcast when it’s distributed to an audience simultaneously and in real-time. Eventually, presumably, only LIVE content will be broadcast.
- When talking about some of these ideas with people, quite often the most passionate response is that “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 is an online game with ten million subscribers paying $15 per month to assemble themselves into guilds (teams) of thirty or more people who work together to accomplish the tasks and goals which make up the never-ending game. It’s not a big leap to think of the person who developed the game as an author whose art is conceiving, designing and building a virtual world in which players (readers) don’t merely watch or read the narrative as it unfolds – they construct it as they play. Indeed, from this perspective, extending the narrative is the essence of the game play.
- 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.
- Editors should have the option of using relatively generic publishing templates for projects whose authors, for one reason or another, do not justify the expense of building a custom site. I can even imagine giving authors access to authoring environments where they can write first drafts or publish experimentally.
- 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.
- Over time we are also likely to see the emergence of “professional readers” whose work consistus of tagging our digitized culture (not just new content, but everything that’s been digitized and in all media types . . . . books, video, audio, graphics). This is not meant to undervalue the role of d.elicious and other tagging schemes or the combined wisdom of the undifferentiated crowd but just a recognition of the likelihood that over time the complexity of the task of filtering the web will give rise to a new job category.
- As this model develops, the way in which readers can comment/contribute/interact needs to evolve continuously in order to allow ever more complex conversations among ever more people.
- How does re-mix fit in? as a mode of expression for authors? as something that readers do? as something that other people are allowed to do with someone’s else’s material?
- It’s important to design sites that are outward-looking, emphasizing the fact that boundaries with the rest of the net are porous.
- Books can have momentum, not in the current sense of position on a best-seller or Amazon list, but rather in the size and activity-level of their communities.
- Books can be imagined as channels, especially when they “gather” other books around them. Consider, for example, the Communist Manifesto 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. [e.g. imagine google searches that make visible not just the interconnections between hits but also how the content of each hit relates to the rest of the document and/or discipline it’s part of… NOTE: this is an example of imagining something we can’t do yet, but that informs the way we design/invent the future]
- In the videodisc/cd-rom phase of electronic publishing we explored the value and potential of integrating all media types in a new multi-medium which afforded reflection. With the rise of the net we began exploring the possibilities of what happens when you locate discourse in a dynamic network. 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. (perhaps this last point makes this even more of a unified field theory)
Thanks for this post, with which I feel in complete agreement.
It’s the first time I see emphasized in such a convincing way how the unity of the (printed)’book’ can be maintained in the digital world, with specific roles for ‘author/reader/editor/publisher’ and consideration for the diversity of production/reception.
This should be a comfort for publishers and editors, even if the efforts to build this new model still require time, training as well as a lot of investment.
I have linked to your posting, which I think is a very important analysis and summation of much that has been written about the networked book. My only reservation is that it is difficult to assume the all (most/enough) readers – or even enough writers – will subscribe to the theory and model. I think there is a definite need for some early research now to explore the possibilities and – more importantly – the responses to the ideas by both communities.
Lots of great stuff in here, Bob; we were just talking about many of these themes in a class I teach at GWU.
The hole(s), it seems to me, revolve around time and money, those two stumbling blocks of living.
One quality about a book as we know it now is it has a defined perimeter. Most of us simply have too little time to really investigate/explore/expand out to all the surround that you describe. For some projects — especially scholarly ones — the networked model you describe would be ideal. But for lots else, the number of instances of the community-based book that can be sustained — or that can be apprehended — may be small, simply because so many of the most likely high-quality participants are the most time-constrained. Unless there’s some mechanism for status/authority/recognition/payment, the limits of time may curtail curiosity and participation.
Monetization is, of course, the other problem. The number of free distractions (both of meat and of candy) is increasing dramatically, and the value proposition has to be substantial to get someone to part with any hard-earned bucks, for any digital entity. For a small number of big projects, institutional and organizational purchasers might be realistic, but for the vaster audiences, I’m not optimistic about publishers finding paying audiences for the kind of networked projects you describe.
I’m excited by the possibilities, however — as I have been for almost as long as you have — and am glad you’ve put so many of your thoughts into a coherent sequence. Thanks.
bob-
thanks for the update
on the current state
of your thoughts here.
-bowerbird
Great post. Quick question:
If what’s being monetized in your vision is the discussion surrounding the text, how does this affect the publishers relationship to other discussions around the text? If I’m a publisher of an old-school print book, then your informal, web-based discussion of my book is a something I want to encourage. Does that relationship change in your scenario?
We should also factor the interaction of screen and print books. The mediation of the print and screen book, getting from one to the other, is already efficient and pervasive as libraries and Amazon have demonstrated. Print attributes of fixity, navigational and haptic refinement and reliable re-access across time, all pair nicely with screen attributes of immediacy, automated search and live content.
Another crucial pair of print and screen attributes is revealed by the self-authenticating nature of the print book contrasted with the self-indexing nature of the screen book. This means that the print book carries with it layers of physical evidence, overt content and bibliographic codes that persistently reveal the source and intent of its production. Such features of self-authentication, confirmed with ease of re-readings across time and cultures, give the material book its special role in transmission. But print books resist indexing and have been compiled into libraries only with great effort or with the help of on-line cataloging and finding aids.
By contrast the screen book is self-indexing because the encoding or production process that renders books to the screen also enables their keyword search routines. This is really amazing. It is as if printing with ink on paper inherently also tabulated the letters and remembered them. However, the effervescent screen books resist authentication. Screen books, like touch screen voting, remain vulnerable and un-trusted with ease of unmonitored deletions or revisions and uncertain provenance. And expectations are very different with screen based research. The content is served quickly and the reader is induced to consume quickly as well.
Now such eerie counterpoints of print and screen works should be observed in detail to better understand their interaction for cultural transmission. Going forward disproportionate dependence on a single mode is too hazardous. Cultural transmission has always relied on composite modes and transitional hybrids such as e-book devices, print-on-demand technology, electronic ink, and page and scroll screen navigation all signal momentum toward more mature and elaborate interaction of print and screen.
And these are really eerie counterpoints. It is as if the screen is filling a transmission void of print and as if print is founding its own more essential, less ramified, role. So simple competition between the print book and screen book is an illusion; each has a different function and there are exclusive attributes of each. A lively interaction of the two modes is in motion. Mirror attributes, rather than contrasts of advantages and disadvantages, have emerged and mutual redefinition is at work. The surge of advance and use of screen based reading confirms its complementary fulfillment in print and a surge and advance of print confirms its new dependence on digital technologies. Least of all should the print book be implicated as obsolescent in a context of frustrations or aspirations of advocates of screen delivery.
the book of the future would be just like the book of the past, except that it might contain audio and video on its frozen “pages.”
I call this the “futurismic fallacy”: tomorrow will be like today, but more so (see attached for a short story I just finished, an attack on space opera’s futurismic sins)
Other “authors’ may be more comfortable setting the terms and boundaries of the subject and allowing others to participate directly in the writing . . . .
Each technological moment has favoured different skillsets in the arts it creates. Vaudeville rewarded charismatics; recorded music favoured virtuosos (charisma doesn’t ooze out of radios, but faultless playing does).
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. “Appeared” -? because there is a scale problem: a writer can’t hold a meaningful, two-way dialogue with a million or even several thousand readers. At best, he can point them at each other and make it seem like he’s part of the discussion.
He’ll be reading a (printed) book. He’ll put the book down and go to the book’s website. Then, he’ll check what other readers are writing in the forums, and maybe leave a message himself, then return to the book. He’ll put the book down again and google a query that’s occurred to him. I’d like to suggest that we change our description of reading to include the full range of these activities, not just time spent looking at the printed page.
Yes: Hypertext is not bounded: it’s a randomwalk through a series of networked objects that the writer and publisher are largely unconnected with.
40 years ago, STEAL THIS BOOK made sense: it packaged information that you couldn’t get anywhere else. Today, STEAL THIS BOOK is obsolete. Static information resources age fast and badly. Today, STEAL THIS BOOK should take the form of a series of suggested Google queries you never thought of, so you can get up to date on it. Information isn’t as important as the cues necessary to retrieve it. The text has been swamped by the title and author indices. And the title and author indices have been swamped by the subject index. Authors should be able to choose the level of moderation/participation at which they want to engage; ditto for readers.
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.
Its not a big leap to think of the person who developed the game as an author whose art is conceiving, designing and building a virtual world in which players (readers) dont merely watch or read the narrative as it unfolds they construct it as they play. Indeed, from this perspective, extending the narrative is the essence of the game play. I’ve written an essay about why I’m skeptical about this:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/webdev/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=JPIZIZW1HZ03MQSNDLPCKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=199100026&pgno=1&queryText=&isPrev=
For me I think that to ignore the persistence of the physically printed book is dangerous. Paper books have a tangible and emotional quality that guarantees their role as a significant force for the foreseeable future. I envisage a slightly different path. I agree that the internet, writer interaction and reader participation all have a role, and yes I can see a future where the interactive experience is part of the reader process. But for me, it will be just that – part of the process. I see a short term future where the book remains kings (after all it is a tried and trusted method of making cash) and publishers produces ‘additional’ material and channels via the internet. It may be that a near technology will produce a product that replaces the book, think Ipod vs vinyl record, bit until this happens the book is here to stay.
i thought this was very perceptive:
> http://www.medialoper.com/hot-topics/apple/reconsidering-the-future-of-ebooks/
-bowerbird
For Pete Tiarks: What a good question! It sounds like the best model would monetize upon access to a discussion group, or to supplemental materials that may enhance one’s understanding of the text. This assumes that there is a demand for that sort of information and socialization – indeed, Bob posits that there is. The trick is making a valuable product at a reasonable price. As a point of comparison, I’m thinking of the OED online, which provides lots of valuable information in a convenient format for a subscription fee. One could use dictionary.com, but it wouldn’t provide the countless examples and derivations that characterize the OED. If there is a demand for reading groups and supplemental materials, and these needs are met in a way that is not matched by a free product, there should be a way to charge a small fee in exchange for access to that universe of information.
The question is, What do people want? What is it that readers Google as they go, and what are they left wondering about after the book is closed? If we can link them to other resources and even a reading community to discuss other (perhaps more philosophical) questions.
But I digress. For the sake of a textbook, it may be best to create reading groups for individual classes, or for teachers to interact with one another to parse the ways they may present a section of the textbook to a class. You must know much more about this than I – as a publisher, who do you desire to discuss your printed text? Would you leave this open to the general public and weed through to highlight the most useful posts for casual users, or would you break the discussions into groups? If so, it’s tricky to decide how to segregate it. But if you create discussion groups that professors and students will use, you have a powerful learning tool. (It’s my instinct that the first step is creating a network that students will use, then professors will appreciate, and finally that teachers will require their students to use.) I applaud you for grasping for outlets to enhance the community of student readers, and wish you luck getting students involved!
Bowerbird: Thanks for the link! Good stuff.
“Any discussion of ebooks and ebook readers will inevitably be derailed by book lovers who insists that they could never use an ebook reader because they “love the smell of books”.
What these book lovers really mean is that they love the smell of some books. That is to say, they love the smell of the Platonic ideal of the perfect novel. Trust me, these people do not love the smell of Principles of Microeconomics.”
In response to Gary Smailes: The book is a beautiful form, and we all have a romantic notion of falling asleep beside one or toting one for a picnic in the park. I don’t believe eReaders will make the paper book obsolete, and I don’t think Bob is in danger of ignoring the power of the book. Instead this is a fascinating opportunity to allow readers to enter the text on a deeper level – this never would have arrived if the original form weren’t, in a word, spectacular. But the television didn’t destroy radio, and one medium can exist alongside another. Digital media like the internet have us reading and sharing our reading experiences in an exciting and convenient way.
Please allow yourself a minute to think beyond the short term, to imagine the possibilities this kind of technology will present. What do you see?
This observation is my favorite:
He’ll be reading a (printed) book. He’ll put the book down and go to the book’s website. Then, he’ll check what other readers are writing in the forums, and maybe leave a message himself, then return to the book. He’ll put the book down again and google a query that’s occurred to him. I’d like to suggest that we change our description of reading to include the full range of these activities, not just time spent looking at the printed page.
Cory characterized this activity as “a randomwalk through a series of networked objects that the writer and publisher are largely unconnected with.” I think you are suggesting that the writer and publisher should become connected with these random walks. And that this material should become part of the book. I don’t think you can go much further with the idea without actually imagining how it would work and what some of the less-desirable outcomes of networked book experiments and business models would be. For example, let’s say we imagine a digital book that captures what readers do in the network and attaches those activities to the book itself. You would, essentially, be building an online “book” that data mines the reading experience, exposing what most readers consider to be intimate and private. Every time I use Google search I’m aware that I’ve just made Google richer. I’ve given away some personal information that is being stored somewhere to be sold to someone. I hate that. I don’t want my books to turn into that. But let’s say you do collect a bunch of data, links, browsing patterns, comments, etc… What do you do with it? How do you make it interesting and not annoying? I’m guessing that this task would fall to the editor, but oh what a task. Sifting through a pile of junk and trying to make a story out of it.
I am not convinced that the gaming analogy works, at least not all of the time. I am assuming that the analogy is with fiction, with the game creator as author and the game players as interactive readers who stretch the narrative.
Part of the beauty of fiction is its ability to make a narrative argument about beauty, truth, human nature. The interplay of setting, character and plot are woven together to make a compelling, often emotional argument.
Although it probably remains to be seen, I can’t see this same power coming from a game in which the ‘author’ sets the boundaries and the ‘readers’ fill in the narrative.
I happened to see a performance by Susan Share at Scripps College. She does a great job of depicting the great range of actions that encompass reading. I have a little report of the event.
Interesting piece. I stumbled upon it while reflecting on a talk I need to give next week, but I am unsure what you mean by reading and writing being social activities. Both certainly can be social activities, but I don’t think either inherently is.
I think that part (g) – ?the economic future of the book – ?merits further exploration. You indicate that this will be worked out as future-books become concrete, which is certainly true, but neglects the reality that these problems are in full view today, even if all the solutions are not.
The real problem here is that books are by nature information goods which now have a marginal cost of zero; information can be replicated instantaneously. This has created huge piracy problems, from those of the RIAA to the electronic pirating of physical textbooks (usually the $150 science sort). To be economically viable, a new book must face this reality and find other means of income. You suggest some sort of subscription to a community; while this works very well for WoW-type book in constant flux where the community is the draw, it does not work so well for more static forms which can be copied (e.g. subscription electronic music stores). Note that I am not claiming subscription does not work at all, just not efficiently.
The one form of economic activity which has flourished in new media is advertising. It is not always well integrated (pre-video clip ads), but it still works well enough for Google to build their empire entirely from ad revenues, while keeping all of their products free (both as far as I know). If we can get past our anti-capitalist biases, this is amazing.
There are surely more efficient new media business models to come, but to work well, they must be text/information based in the way that advertising and the web in general are. The alternative, to keep one’s DRMs (broadly construed) ahead of the technological curve, seems to be a losing battle.
Lightning Source produces 30,000 to 35,000 print books a day with an average run of 1.8 copies. Such a phenomenon of electrostatic printing and on-line fulfillment exemplifies the book-on-demand industry and the advancing digital future of print .