Ev BogueI'd like to introduce Craig Mod.
Craig is a book designer investigating the future of publishing.
His tag line probably says what he's working on best: "We're in the middle of a publishing shakedown & I'm just trying to make sense of it."
Craig penned a brilliant article on the current state of publishing. I'd like to invite you to read it here: Post-Artifact Books & Publishing (craigmod.com/journal/post_artifact/).
Kevin Kelly wrote a follow up piece: Post-Artifact Booking (kk.org).
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Change + Books
How we're designing, distributing, and even consuming, books is changing.
Up until recently, we thought about books as the artifact of an act that happened in near isolation.
A writer created silently at a cabin in the woods. He got up the courage to send his finished manuscript off to a publishing house. There the writer was either rejected or accepted. Then they sent back the manuscript and said: change this.
Creating books no longer works this way.
Now we see books evolve through real time. The edits happen between audience and author, maybe even long before a book is published. The work happens in the relationships between author and reader.
Questions in my mind:
What formats will we use? EPUB3 (with its integration with CSS3) seems to be the upcoming standard, but that doesn't mean PDF won't be around for awhile.
How can I allow readers to interact with book material during the early creation process?
When I look at the publishing world, I see many adapting slowly -- because they don't know what to do yet.
And of course, I'm experimenting myself. -Ev