Book: A Futurist's Manifesto

Book description

The ground beneath the book publishing industry dramatically shifted in 2007, the year the Kindle and the iPhone debuted. Widespread consumer demand for these and other devices has brought the pace of digital change in book publishing from "it might happen sometime" to "it’s happening right now"—and it is happening faster than anyone predicted.

Yet this is only a transitional phase. Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto is your guide to what comes next, when all books are truly digital, connected, and ubiquitous. Through this collection of essays from thought leaders and practitioners, you’ll become familiar with a wide range of developments occurring in the wake of this digital book shakeup:

  • Discover new tools that are rapidly transforming how content is created, managed, and distributed
  • Understand the increasingly critical role that metadata plays in making book content discoverable in an era of abundance
  • Look inside some of the publishing projects that are at the bleeding edge of this digital revolution
  • Learn how some digital books can evolve moment to moment, based on reader feedback

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Table of Contents
  4. Copyright
  5. Preface
  6. Introduction
  7. The Setup: Approaches to the Digital Present
    1. 1. Context, Not Container (Brian O'Leary)
    2. 2. Distribution Everywhere (Andrew Savikas)
    3. 3. What We Can Do with "Books" (Liza Daly)
    4. 4. What We Talk About When We Talk About Metadata (Laura Dawson)
    5. 5. Analyzing the Business Case for DRM (Kirk Biglione)
    6. 6. Tools of the Digital Workflow (Brian O'Leary)
    7. 7. Designing Books in the Digital Age (Craig Mod)
  8. The Outlook: What Is Next for the Book?
    1. 8. Why the Book and the Internet Will Merge (Hugh McGuire)
    2. 9. Web Literature: Publishing on the Social Web (Eli James)
    3. 10. Making Books Out of Words (Erin McKean)
    4. 11. Why Digital Books Will Become Writable (Terry Jones)
    5. 12. Above the Silos: Social Reading in the Age of Mechanical Barriers (Travis Alber & Aaron Miller)
    6. 13. User Experience, Reader Experience (Brett Sandusky)
    7. 14. App, Meet Book (Ron Martinez)
    8. 15. The Curation of Obscurity (Peter Brantley)
    9. 16. A Reader's Bill of Rights (Kassia Krozser)
  9. The Things We Can Do with Books: Projects from the Bleeding Edge
    1. 17. Communities of Writers (Jürgen Fauth, Fictionaut)
    2. 18. On the Therapist's Couch: Books as Apps, Really? (Neal Hoskins, WingedChariot)
    3. 19. The Engagement Economy (Bobby Gruenewald, YouVersion)
    4. 20. How Do Books Get Discovered? (Patrick Brown, Kyusik Chung, and Otis Chandler, Goodreads)
    5. 21. The Surprising Power of "Little Data" (Peter Collingridge, Bookseer)
    6. 22. Exaggerations and Perversions (Valla Vakili, Small Demons)
    7. 23. Pain and Its Alleviation (John Oakes, OR Books)
    8. 24. The End of the Public Library (As We Knew It)? (Eli Neiburger, Ann Arbour District Library)
    9. 25. Now Is the Time for Experiments (Ian Barker, Symtext)
    10. 26. The Forgotten Consumer (Jacob Lewis, Figment)
    11. 27. A Conversation That Can't Be Controlled (Sarah Wendell, Smart Bitches Trashy Books)
  10. About the Editors

Product information

  • Title: Book: A Futurist's Manifesto
  • Author(s): Hugh McGuire, Brian O'Leary
  • Release date: October 2011
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781449320386