Book: A Futurist's Manifesto

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What We Can Do with "Books" (Liza Daly)

Liza Daly is Vice President of Engineering at Safari Books Online. Previously, she was owner of Threepress Consulting, where she provided strategy and software for publishers, authors, and vendors. In 2008, she developed Bookworm, one of the first open-source EPUB readers, and in February of 2010 released Ibis Reader™, the first HTML5 ebook platform. Liza is on the Board of Directors for the International Digital Publishing Forum. You can find Liza on Twitter at: @liza.

What Can You Do with a Digital Book?

You can do a lot of things with a paper book. You can read it. You can make notes in it.  You can fold down corners of various pages to mark something of note or just keep track of where you are.  You can easily lend a physical book to a friend.  You can destroy it forever. You can even make it into art.

But what can you do with a digital book?

In the nascent electronic book era, much of the discussion covers what you can’t do.  Generally, digital books can’t be lent or resold.  You can’t curl up with them and smell them, nor can you pass them on to grandchildren.

Many of these limitations have nothing to do with the intrinsic qualities of a digital book, but are instead a reflection of the difficult transition between an old, established medium and a new, to-date undeveloped one.  We compare the physical to the digital and quickly spot the differences: digital’s shortcomings.

Ebooks do not have to be mere simulacra of printed ...