Book Futures, Pt 2
After a short speech by each of the panel, the floor was thrown open to questions. Impossible as it was to get through them all, they raised a lot of good points (even if they weren't always well-constructed questions).
Martyn pointed out that technology doesn't always evolve in the way you expect, for example the use of the QWERTY keyboard isn't the most efficient in terms of typing, but historically was the set-out that avoided the hammers from jamming.
John labelled this the "age of the amateur". For example, anyone can now become a film-maker, but it hasn't been the downfall of film. In the same way, anyone can now write.
Following a question regarding academic publishing and the peer-review process, there was some interesting discussion about standards. Martyn noted that in academic publishing, the author isn't looking for payment, but CV building and tenure (my words, not his). Scott observed that until the Internet, academic material went through a very small number of peer-reviewers. He also noted that the world is full of books that are crap, but have a lot of appeal, and I personally think these two points go together - yes there is a lot of crap on the Internet, but that doesn't mean people aren't interested in it. The Internet creates its own peer-review process.
Martyn made the great point that the book world is really a number of different industries united by a format - literature is different from religion is different from trade is different from cookbooks. Each is used and read differently, and evolution will therefore happen at a different pace in each area. As an aside, I think you already see this in academic publishing and journals, and there are some industries that will always be difficult to move to another media, such as the graphics in architecture journals.
The discussion then turned a little more towards e-books and Digital Rights Management (DRM). Scott gave the statistic that in his last 2 years at Waterstone's when they were selling books through Amazon, they sold 1 e-book. Most of the panelists seem to agree that providing some free digital content actually stimulated sales of the physical product in both books and music. Martyn noted that most of what is holding back digitisation is rights and debates about the rights of the author.
At this point the night was pretty much concluded, and I think it's apt to finish with an observation by Scott Pack, who said that we wouldn't believe the future of the book if someone showed it to us today.
Martyn pointed out that technology doesn't always evolve in the way you expect, for example the use of the QWERTY keyboard isn't the most efficient in terms of typing, but historically was the set-out that avoided the hammers from jamming.
John labelled this the "age of the amateur". For example, anyone can now become a film-maker, but it hasn't been the downfall of film. In the same way, anyone can now write.
Following a question regarding academic publishing and the peer-review process, there was some interesting discussion about standards. Martyn noted that in academic publishing, the author isn't looking for payment, but CV building and tenure (my words, not his). Scott observed that until the Internet, academic material went through a very small number of peer-reviewers. He also noted that the world is full of books that are crap, but have a lot of appeal, and I personally think these two points go together - yes there is a lot of crap on the Internet, but that doesn't mean people aren't interested in it. The Internet creates its own peer-review process.
Martyn made the great point that the book world is really a number of different industries united by a format - literature is different from religion is different from trade is different from cookbooks. Each is used and read differently, and evolution will therefore happen at a different pace in each area. As an aside, I think you already see this in academic publishing and journals, and there are some industries that will always be difficult to move to another media, such as the graphics in architecture journals.
The discussion then turned a little more towards e-books and Digital Rights Management (DRM). Scott gave the statistic that in his last 2 years at Waterstone's when they were selling books through Amazon, they sold 1 e-book. Most of the panelists seem to agree that providing some free digital content actually stimulated sales of the physical product in both books and music. Martyn noted that most of what is holding back digitisation is rights and debates about the rights of the author.
At this point the night was pretty much concluded, and I think it's apt to finish with an observation by Scott Pack, who said that we wouldn't believe the future of the book if someone showed it to us today.
posted by Laurie @ 9:36 AM
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