Book Futures, Pt 1
It's been a few days since I last posted, the combined effect of a morning job, and preparing to leave the country. I did take some time out last night though to attend Book Futures, the last event of the 1st London Word Festival.
Featuring Scott Pack, Chris Meade, Martyn Daniels, John Lenahan and Shirley Dent, they generated lively discussion for an hour and a half (though all could have gone on for easily that long again, I'm sure). My apologies for any mis-quotations, but I'll try to distill the gist of the conversation from my 3 pages of closely scrawled notes.
After a reading from John Lenahan, Scott Pack started the evening by summing-up the evening - that is, we don't know the future, and if you ask 100 different people, you'll get 100 different answers. He predicted a lot of change for writers and publishers before readers really notice much difference, and made the observation that book retailers are "shitting themselves" about digital technology. He drew the same parallels between the digitisation of books and music that I did in LibraryThing not that long ago. Essentially, major changes came about in the music industry when it became more portable and more enjoyable (I put it as more "cool"), whereas things aren't quite the same for books. They're already portable. You don't read a chapter of this book, then a chapter of something else, in the same way that you might change albums to listen to different songs. Readers will be the ones that decide what happens if digital media, and will only take it up if it improves things. Where the reading experience can be improved (travel guides, cook books) is where the changes will happen.
Martyn Daniels was up next, with an analogy that predictions about the future of the book where like those about global warming. You've got your doom-mongers, your profiteers, experts and ignorers. Ultimately however, we're discussing consumer demand in a vacuum since there is little digital content available. Figures he gave later in the evening pointed to 3,000,000 books in print currently, and only 100,000 e-books of which 80,000 is academic material. He also called the Kindle a "waste of space" which, in its current incarnation at least, I'd agree with. Daniels also pointed out that form has largely dictated content up until now, and digitisation offers the opportunity to "explode the spine". With writers throughout history making use of serialisation, from Dickens to Stephen King to the new mobile novels in Japan, we should look at new technology and writing as a glass half-full.
Chris Meade followed up the idea of form over content by asking, What matters to us about Literature? He predicts that a new kind of writer will rise for a new kind of reader. We now have more possibilities for collaboration between a creative writer and a creative reader, making use of the technology.
Featuring Scott Pack, Chris Meade, Martyn Daniels, John Lenahan and Shirley Dent, they generated lively discussion for an hour and a half (though all could have gone on for easily that long again, I'm sure). My apologies for any mis-quotations, but I'll try to distill the gist of the conversation from my 3 pages of closely scrawled notes.
After a reading from John Lenahan, Scott Pack started the evening by summing-up the evening - that is, we don't know the future, and if you ask 100 different people, you'll get 100 different answers. He predicted a lot of change for writers and publishers before readers really notice much difference, and made the observation that book retailers are "shitting themselves" about digital technology. He drew the same parallels between the digitisation of books and music that I did in LibraryThing not that long ago. Essentially, major changes came about in the music industry when it became more portable and more enjoyable (I put it as more "cool"), whereas things aren't quite the same for books. They're already portable. You don't read a chapter of this book, then a chapter of something else, in the same way that you might change albums to listen to different songs. Readers will be the ones that decide what happens if digital media, and will only take it up if it improves things. Where the reading experience can be improved (travel guides, cook books) is where the changes will happen.
Martyn Daniels was up next, with an analogy that predictions about the future of the book where like those about global warming. You've got your doom-mongers, your profiteers, experts and ignorers. Ultimately however, we're discussing consumer demand in a vacuum since there is little digital content available. Figures he gave later in the evening pointed to 3,000,000 books in print currently, and only 100,000 e-books of which 80,000 is academic material. He also called the Kindle a "waste of space" which, in its current incarnation at least, I'd agree with. Daniels also pointed out that form has largely dictated content up until now, and digitisation offers the opportunity to "explode the spine". With writers throughout history making use of serialisation, from Dickens to Stephen King to the new mobile novels in Japan, we should look at new technology and writing as a glass half-full.
Chris Meade followed up the idea of form over content by asking, What matters to us about Literature? He predicts that a new kind of writer will rise for a new kind of reader. We now have more possibilities for collaboration between a creative writer and a creative reader, making use of the technology.
posted by Laurie @ 8:43 AM
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