Bob Stein in The Future of the Book talked about some absolutely daring and different concepts of our concept of the book! To think that we will have to re-think not only the book, as no longer being a physical object, but to re-think everything else associated with a physical book - right from the bookshelf!
The future of the book maybe a whole new process...
An author has an idea; he/she gets this idea out via a blog; gets some faithful followers; they discuss this idea; it goes back and forth; thus emerges the ‘book’. This is the creation process.
The consumption process will also sort of be the same. The ‘book’ is released; readers read it, come back and start a discussion with the author.
Total collaboration and participation.
So, the magical, mysterious author/ omniscient narrator persona will no longer exist. That dichotomy is on its way out.
To think of being able to blog with creators LIKE Van Gogh, or Bach, or Oscar Peterson, or Oscar Wilde, or Lawrence Sterne, or James Joyce, or Frank Kafka!!
I’m excited now. Really excited. Trifle apprehensive. But still excited.
And there’s more to come...since there’s no real ‘going to the press’ business, the book can continue for however long it wants to. No sequels and second editions. No out-of-print business. No second runs. No hard back, no paper back. Just an ongoing process. Literally endless.
All I could think about was - what about copyright? So who owns the ‘book’ or the ‘ideas’? The one that started the ‘blog’ or the bloggers that actually contributed to it? The publisher or the editors that compiled all the views, opinions, refereed and re-worded, filled in lacunas where needed?
I think 30 years from now, there probably won’t be a concept called ‘copyright’. We will all collaboratively own everything I think. No fences. No mending walls. Robert Frost will like that. Back to the pre-copyright era. No IP, no patents. It’s freedom of expression, after all!!
I also think we will see a major set of changes once the google book settlement case is decided. Not sure in whose favour the courts will rule! Wonder what will happen to projects like googlescholar, Project Guttenberg, etc, if the ruling is not in their favour.
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this is exciting:) it will also let authors build up an audience for their not-yet-published manuscript, people who will buy the book when it is published. a good reason for publishers to take them on.. and hopefully resulting in more books that people WANT to read.
ReplyDeleteI have seen this in action in an online community of mine but I'm not aware of a book which has been successfully launched in this manner.
ReplyDeleteMany authors on that site tend to write slash fiction. So they find this method of promoting their book to be more useful than regular marketing. But this will probably release a mass market of aspiring authors creating blogs and seems to cut out the acquisition editor's role of limiting published books to being those that should be read.
So while the concept is exciting, it is somewhat scary too.