The announcement this morning of the launch in the UK of a new waterproof laptop looks like another nail in the coffin of the traditional paper book, as the new device at last makes it possible to read a downloaded electronic fiction while relaxing in a hot bath.
The manufacturers claim that the latest in e-ink technology makes concentrating on a complex text 21% easier on the electronic device than with a conventional paperback. Users can switch between reading on screen (with font -size increasing automatically to aid understanding of complex sentences), listening to an audio recording, and utilising a revolutionary new facility called ‘skimread mode’ which provides a spoken précis of the gist of more tedious passages from literary classics.
The device is the size of a large paperback, can be read in landscape or portrait format, with or without back-lighting, is fully recyclable and light as a sponge. The i-Wash is launched in the UK on April 1st and will be available in the USA as soon as the economy picks up.
Author Archives: chris meade
friday projections
It’s all go on the digital publishing scene in the UK with Penguin launching their first ARG next week – go to www.wetellstories.co.uk for more details, and various big companies plotting experiments. Meanwhile this week Gail Rebuck, chief executive of the Random House Group, delivered the Stationers’ Company Annual Lecture on New Chapter or Last Page? Publishing books in a digital age, an upbeat and positively inspirational assessment of the potential for e-reading.
She ends: “This future is ours to grasp, but only if we understand that it is not technology that makes books, but readers, and authors and creativity. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that every child can read, and can have his or her world opened to the extraordinary possibility that only books can offer. Our responsibility is to nurture every last drop of creativity and talent that we have in our society. And finally our responsibility is to protect creativity so that all of us, not just the authors themselves, can be rewarded and enriched.”
All great stuff and well worth reading in full.
Rebuck says, “people who think a new reading device will somehow change the content of the books we love are missing the point: our attraction to narrative is visceral and enduring, an integral part of being human. Whether we choose to read our favourite novelists on a printed page or in E Ink, it simply doesn’t matter, because that core experience of books will remain undiminished.”
Undiminished yes, but changed surely. The next great breakthrough won’t be an e-reader but some born digital piece of transliterate brilliance. Great art stops us in our hectic cultural tracks and forces us to settle down and appreciate it on whatever ‘platform’ it was made for. We need a digital Shakespeare (or even a Rowling) to get readers downloading with passion.
I feel more confident about our enduring cultural richness than the viability of parts of the publishing industry in these turbulent times of convergence and confusion when anyone with a sharp mind, an office full of macs and some financial backing can have a crack at producing pretty much anything . Doing our research for the Arts Council it’s been a delight to meet sparky young independent publishers like Salt and Snow who are doing exciting things to sell books made of paper in a webby way, but it’s tough out there.
I was delighted to be on the panel of ‘Book Futures’ last night, the final event of the London Word Festival, a dynamic new event marketed through a torrent of blogposts, emails and facebookery. Up there with me was Scott Pack, the once much feared buyer of Waterstones – he who decided which books went in the shop windows – whose blog-to-book company The Friday Project appears to be in deep financial trouble. Of course rumours of new backers hover, but it’s hard to tell right now whose waving whose drowning.
fight path
“Writers of the world arise! It’s time to throw off the shackles of traditional publishing contracts and face a brand new digital future with a brand new set of priorities.” So starts an article on the Guardian ‘Comment Is Free’ blogs by Kate Pullinger, writer of fictions in media old and new. Kate argues forcefully that authors are in danger of being short changed by publishers as they rush to secure digital rights before anyone susses how different the dissemination of a digital text is to publishing the printed word.
e-read all about it
An article in Publishing News this week suggests that UK publishers are bracing themselves for the arrival on these shores of the Kindle or a rival to it soon. Much discussion of e-royalties is going on; HarperCollins and Random House US are putting some whole works on line for free; meanwhile Francis Bennett, the consultant who has been gazing into the crystal ball for the booktrade re digitisation, admits to being “baffled by Amazon – they never do what you expect them to.”
Consultant (and ex-Penguin boss) Anthony Forbes Watson is more definite (maybe): “The competition will be between the best of the closed networks. Perhaps Amazon will rope in Abebooks. Perhaps Barnes & Noble will join up with a partner to combat Amazon, perhaps Amazon will develop something with Apple. But I don’t think the market will be that big. I’d be surprised if it goes above 3%, or 10% tops.”
Well, nothing to worry about there then. Meanwhile we’ve been talking to friends in the booktrade who point out how little publishers will do for their huge slice of the cake these digital days, once printing and physical distribution are out of the picture. Do the e-royalties being offered reflect these changes? Do they hell.
a brief history of book
In the Institute’s London office we’ve been talking about how to get across the message that the book has been through permanent change throughout its history, to knock on the head the simplistic argument of good old page v bad new screen. Here’s my first stab at a beginner’s guide.
digital livings
Alongside our research for Arts Council England, I’m also looking at how how new media writers earn their livings and make their way in the world.
The Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University is so innovative that there isn’t an obvious career path for its graduates nor an established group of successful role models for students to look to in the UK for inspiration. The Digital Livings project is finding out how writers are carving out professional careers, starting with a survey of UK writers and expanding worldwide later in the year.
Which skills do new media writers possess? Where do they sell their work? What advice do they have to offer those wishing to follow in their footsteps? Is the market for digital fiction growing or not? I’ll report back on our findings.
future boy
The picture is of a Futurizer, based on the kinds of contraption I built as a child from cardboard, balsa wood and string which allowed me to communicate with other planets and centuries. It was reconstructed by a group of us at a conference on Transliteracy at the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University, organised by PART. The aim of the day was to try to make some transliterate objects and in so doing consider if such things can, could or should exist. We had an enjoyable if inconclusive time grappling with this.
Plug headphones into an iPod or XBox and you will be able to listen to one of a large but finite range of sounds. Plug headphones into a cardboard box and you can (not) hear anything you can possibly imagine. Travelling back through the years to my childhood, these machines allowed me to think across time and space, out of the (cardboard) box. They were also a means of engaging with the TV I loved, in a bygone era when no adult expressed any interest in the way I read my TV21 comic or consumed Thunderbirds and The Man From Uncle.
Unlike those friends who screwed together bits of meccanno to build working bridges, or fiddled with circuit boards until bulbs lit up, my games were all about interfaces.
I never worried for a moment about how these things might actually work. Now a lot of inventiveness is once again going into cutting and sticking, playing with FaceBook applications and YouTube clips like we used Corn Flake packets and sticky-backed plastic. Isn’t it great, living here in the future?
By the end of the day the Futurizer had been photographed and uploaded to Second Life. a fitting place for it to end up really: transmogrified, transliterated, futurized.
ace research news in the uk
The Institute for the Future of the Book has been appointed by Arts Council England to undertake research into digital developments in literature. This is exciting news for us, not least because it marks the official launch of our London office.
Over the next few months Chris Meade and Sebastian Mary Harrington will be talking to a wide range of organisations including Arts Council England literature clients and others whose work could provide useful models to the sector.
We’ll be looking at book publishing and magazines, reader development, writers including collaborative and new media authors and the blurring of distinctions between amateur and professional, live literature and festivals, plus other web activity that could provide inspiration to agencies working to spread the word about the word – and we’ll be posting questions and comments on the ifbook blog as we go along.
Sebastian Mary Harrington’s scarf captured live under construction at the Institute’s London HQ, skillfully knitted in the colours of The Institute for the Future of the Book – and The School of Everything – to celebrate the start of our new research project.
literature electrique
I’ve been meaning to post something for a while about The Reprover, or Le Reprobateur, a hugely impressive work of digital fiction by François Coulon, Paris-based digital writer. It includes excellent cartoons, live video of the main character and a witty text in French and elaborate English which expands and contracts – the same sentence blooming different additional clauses each time you pass a mouse across it. This is a deeply disconcerting effect at first, but once you’ve got used to it, a whole new kind of three dimensional reading emerges. It’s a fascinating idea which could only work on the web.
I’ve been meaning to post.. but haven’t got round to it. That’s why I need a Reprobateur, “someone who would be there simply to give us a bad conscience.” Part psychoanalyst, part priest, part bloke in a suit, the Reprover is a wonderful creation. The story is set in the 80s and you can navigate around it by spinning a 3D polyhedron. “It’s literature plus electricity!” says Coulon.
It’s also plus so many tricks and distractions that it’s hard to settle into – there’s too much fun to be had clicking, spinning and adjusting the layers of soundtrack to actually immerse oneself in the story. The Reprover is beautifully produced and costs real money: 16 Euros or 160 for institutions, but you can get an excellent taster by going to http://www.totonium.com.
I’ve been going back to this one several times for more. Once you’re signed up you can contact the narrator for free advice from your very own Reprover. You’ll wonder how you coped all those years without one.
the year of reading dangerously
2008 is going well so far for the Institute in London – I was invited to 10 Downing Street this morning for the launch of the National Year of Reading which takes place in 2008, as one of a small group including literacy promoters, librarians, teachers, schoolchildren, authors and Richard Madeley, the presenter who with his partner Judy has become the British equivalent of Oprah, hosting a hugely influential TV book group which helps the trade to sell stacks of the titles it recommends. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has had a rough few months since taking over from Blair, but was at his best today – he’s a genuine enthusiast for reading.
One topic for discussion was the importance of fathers reading to their children, and in particular to their sons. There are so many opportunities for new media here to help reach out to those who don’t think of themselves as ‘book people’.
Ten years ago the first Year of Reading kicked off a lot of activities and alliances which have thrived since, but I don’t remember anyone giving much attention to the internet – except as a place to download resources from. So I was delighted to be there this time representing the Institute, and able to make the point at the outset that any promotion of the importance of literacy skills, reading appetite and the pleasure of literature must recognise the cultural importance of the networked screen and the interconnectedness of different media in the minds of young people and the lives of us all, even those who don’t acknowledge this. Well, I kind of made that point…briefly and perhaps not so clearly. Anyway, I was there and got to speak up for if:book. The year has a different theme each month, ending with the Future of Reading in December, so we are planning all kinds of activities to link with that. Watch this space.