Book-Diva

Remaking the Book Store in the Online World

How does one remake the bookstore in an online world?  Some would say look to Amazon and other booksellers who are using technology to create a new experience especially through the use of ereaders.  In fact, some may say that they're better.  They can make suggestions on what you have bought in the past or allow you to search very easily by keyword to find exactly what you want.  There is no one looking to pester you, the reader, in your search for the thrill you are seeking right there, right at that moment. With wireless connectivity, books are even available for download to that ereader.

The cyber world has many attractions.  Many that I seek to enjoy especially when my personal time is scarce, and I am forced to be two places at once.  Physically at home or work.  Virtually, at the bookstore.  There is something, however, to be said for taking the time to truly experience the physical nature of a space.  Not just visualize it.

The bookstore has always been in some way an oasis for me.  It is a place that I walk into and suddenly, I can go anywhere.  I leave my thoughts of work and family behind to focus on my particular quest of knowledge for that moment.  It is a place where I can solve problems.  Even if the problem of the day is to escape for a little while.

Being a career woman and mom leaves little time for "being in the moment." The various roles I play subsume my subconscious to the point I don't know where I truly am.  By saying I'm going to the bookstore, I allow myself to escape into my personal dressing room where these daily roles become just that, roles.  The bookstore suddenly becomes about me being me.

This transition which a normal bookstore engenders for me is nearly impossible in a virtual bookstore.  I have to peruse books on computers or an ereader while at the same time juggling my pda, two children, and yapping shelties.  The virtual world does not offer the same physical sense of sanctity that any normal bookstore, including the large chain stores, does. 

For many of reading addicts, the traditional bookstore is a part of the reading experience.  Reading snippets of different books and viewing the covers of books.  Yes, this can be done virtually with some negotiation of the newer technology.  However, the virtual experience seems somewhat more controlled and influenced by outside factors.  Bookstores allows readers to ponder and to poke around a little without life intruding.  You can kindly ignore the store employees in favor of total absorption.  Somehow, that does not seem possible with online ads and suggestions.  There's no escaping that in the virtual world. 

Real bookstores also become a meeting place for different sorts of people.  One time, I actually saw a group of people studying supernatural events (i.e. ghost sitings) and how to investigate them.  Imagine how one would do that virtually.  Or, the time when my six year old son started to voluntarily make book suggestions for a three year old girl he had just met.

In short, the real bookstore is not only a physical way to mentally escape.  It is a meeting place for people with ideas and different interests.  Where, in fact, different ideas and eccentricities are explored and celebrated.  There is no need to fit in because a bookstore is a safe place to stand out.  In public, private sort of way.  I've yet to see where the virtual bookstore can top that.

Will Publishing Go the Way of the Record Industry?

With the advent of ebooks , whose sales have tripled by some accounts over the last year, I have noticed some interesting parallels to the decline of the music industry.  However, I think there are some major differences as well since the publishing industry has learned some important lessons from the music industry case study.

One, there has been a major change in the form-factor of the product as well as the distribution.  In the case of the music industry, it was Napster and other entities.  In the case of the publishing industry, there are several players including Amazon, Microsoft, and of course, Google.  These players in the online book arena are more established companies, titans really, rather than just an upstart like Napster was in the beginning.

Second, many of the traditional publishing entities have been slow in recognizing the appeal and power of the new form factor and distribution method.  Like the music industry, traditional methods of publication and distribution of books has continued to suffer significant declines while ebook sales have increased by threefold in the last year or so.  Newer generations of readers are consuming books in these new ways.

Third, there has been a strong reaction from traditional publishers and artists to the moves of such companies, like Google.  What is dkfferent, however, is how the writers and publishers seem to be more aware of Google's strategy, particulary in regard to orphan works.   In fact, many governments, including the US, are directly challenging the strategy and to pre-empt the ability of Google to create high barriers for any other entrant to the online book business. It seems like the stakeholders are more proactive and understand that a new market is being created, which not just one ompany should have the right to dominate.

Fourth, through this new form factor and distribution method, there has been a democratization of sorts for indiviual artists and smalller businesses to be able to publish different types of content outside of the larger players.  Whether it be through Amazon or Lulu.com, more and more authors can do it all while retaining a larger piece of the pie. 

Book-Whore.....Guess I'm one.....

I'm a book-whore.  Some women are shoe-whores or bag-whores.  I'm just a plain old book-whore.  I love them in all sizes and shapes.  Hard cover, soft cover, electronic, pdf.  If the content or story is good enough, I'm the number to call.

I seem to be a person who does not favor one format over another, either electronic or physical copy.  Depending upon who you're talking to and what generation they are from, a religious reformation of the book format is underway.  Attached to the traditional book format, some readers and writers refuse to consider the new electronic books of any value.  Other members of the new generation seem to think that Twitterature is on the same plain of accomplishment as Keats, Austen, or Hemingway.

Personally, I've seen where more and more where the written word is not just enough in electronic format.  As a person who works in the IT training industry for a profession, I've seen where many computer professionals value the weightiness of the printed book and provide more value on this than any amount of electronic content that may be made available to them.  I've also seen the value of having information readily at your fingertips to consume and to enjoy at your leisure.

Being a Gen-Xer myself and a veteran of the Dot-com revolution/bust, I'm beginning to see where the aspirations of my generation are starting to come true.  Content any-where, any-time.  But, there is a more traditional view I also subscribe to.  That of becoming unplugged for true thinking and absorption of ideas.  Every evening I need to turn off the computer and the technical gadgets just to reset my thoughts.  That's when I indulge in my ongoing book-addiction.

True, the new electronic formats are not where the traditional book form-factor are in terms of overall experience.  But, they maintain the future ability to add more context and interactivity ad the publishing tools and technology become more developed to add to the overall experience.

What I care about, in the end, is the story.  And, how quickly I consume that story.  What I like about the newer technologies, like the new ereaders, is the ability to load up all my favorite novels and bring them no matter where I go.  Unfortunately, my car tends to look like an overloaded library as it is.

Evolution of the Book

Ever since Gutenburg invented the printing press, the book has been a powerful expression of ideas for the literate masses.  It was portable across the sea and continents.  It could convey the exact ideas of a writer through the ages better than any oral tradition could.  It was an evolution of human technology that would contine to evolve across the centuries and still maintain its importance, its centrality to the dispersion of ideas.

Books have always been a way to have a relationship with myself and to explore the different aspects of life that I was not born into.  It was a way to quickly slip into another way of thinking or living in a different culture, a way to experience a way of thinking.  The wholeness of a book seemed to provide a holistic logic to a story.  It starts here and ends there.  So clear, so defined.

I came across an article today entitled "Why E-books Look So Ugly" by Priya Ganapti on Wired.com, which I thought made a relevant observation, "Typography, layout, illustrations and carefully thought out covers are all being reduced to a uniform, black-on-gray template that looks the same whether you're reading Price and Prejudice and Zombies or the Federalist Papers."  Essentially, her perspective that what a makes a physical book, the resulting product of the writing and editorial process, is now evolving into the e-book, which is still maturing as a platform for the book artform.

Reading this article made me think about what I like about a book.  It is portable and something that only I own.  It is an amalgamation of several people's work including editors, typesetters, and illustrators.  I wonder just how much a book is the creation of the author rather than a product of the publishing engine.  Just how much is changed in the publishing process that is missing in the end.  How much is lost of the creator, the author, to the need to market and make money from a business perspective.  Books are a business, a fact that I will not dispute.  But, one has to wonder about how much the written word has become too much of a business and too much a conduit for shock-jocks to sell a product full of ill-written innuendo.

The social networks today are creating a new language and interactivity reminiscent of the time before the book became a popular mass medium.  People meet in forums, both private and public, to share their ideas, rumors, and emotions.  People, who would have been reading in the past, are now spending enormous amounts of time online to socially network in short-chique language that celebrates brevity and the wonder of a single-dimensional existence. What is the same, however, is the way we still all seek to make sense of the ideas, how to create that same holistic framework for understanding the stories and conversations that are occurring.

Personally, I applaud the energy of the new social networks and the business models they are creating.  Ebooks, from a publishing perspective, are quickly becoming the fastest growing segment.  I believe that the form-factor will continue to evolve to allow more unique expression of what each novel should look like and how individual words should appear.  That need for structure and for continuity in the cyber world will still always bring back the reader to the book format.  If anything, I think the lack of embellishment that comes with a physical format uplifts the power of the word and how the language is constructed.  In the end, that is what will make the book an enduring format.

Twitterature, not Literature

The publisher Penguin has started a new iniatiative to provide literary classics in twenty tweets or less on Twitter.  They are calling it Twitterature.  See the news blurb I came across here:

Literary Classics Something to Tweet About

I continued to dig further on this term and found several ways authors and publishers were using Twitter to promote their writing.t

One way that authors are leveraging Titter is to actually write their content as Tweets. I found a blog entry from socialmediatrader.com that focuses on JunkDNA, a witer who used to Twitter to start writing.  According to the entry, he now has 666 followers (as of a year ago), has improved his writer, and is building more awareness about his writings.

Publishers, like Penguin, are tweeting actual literary classics.  An other article I came across discussed on the Daily Beast talking about how a publisher released Ulysses in Tweets every 15 minutes.  In total, it took a total of 8 months.  Yikes.

I'm wondering whether twittering will work better for short-stories or a serial book series similar to the wovel format.  I'm going to try this format with some short stories I've been working on. 

I'm going to continue exploring on this topic of using Twitter to get feedback on my writing.