New models for books in a digital world
For some, the emergence of consumption of information via the internet brought tidings of doom for books. A generation or two before that, television stoked similar fears. But the reality may be different. I don't have statistics on book sales to support my hunch but I suspect that more books are being written, sold and read than ever before.
Our ability to read is accelerating as we consume ideas and thoughts through documents at work, personal emails and gazillions of internet sources. The habit of reading translates in a supplementary way to books, creating positive externalities instead of crowding out books. Interestingly, the externality does not translate to newspapers but they are in a different market (focus on news vs ideas and thoughts). And in a world where everybody is publishing weblogs, having your thoughts published as a book is seen as a manifestation of authority in a subject matter.
Amazon was a pioneer in internet-charging the book market. Other services have sprouted to provide a digital layer to the world of books, making them more useful.
Flemming Madsen provides us with Connect via Books enabling us to explore the social aspects of books (what are people, who read similar books to you, reading?). JP inspired these thoughts about books and points us to BookCrossing which I always wanted use but I ended up exchanging books with like-minded strangers on ReadItSwapIt (a book swapping service like BookMooch).
A tangent... One of my first book swaps left me pondering how much you can infer about other people from the books they own. One of my fellow book swappers had a library with diet literature, books on asthma and infertility and books with titles "How to live with multiple sclerosis", "Choosing a lasting memorial". The answer to the last one could be to write a book.
That is what Mike Jetter, the man behind the MindManager mind mapping software, and his wife did about his fight with leukaemia. I have just finished reading The Cancer Code (thanks to Michael Sampson for sending the book to me from New Zealand). Happily, Mike has no need for a memorial yet.
The power of books can also be seen in the recent trend of books about internet phenomena ending up as best sellers. I am thinking of The Search, The Long Tail and Naked Conversations.
Tags: books Amazon readitswapit bookmooch connectviabooks MindJet book publishing blogs
I interviewed the owner of bookmooch recently (John Buckman)
http://librarytwopointzero.blogspot.com/2006/10/interview-with-john-buckman-owner-of.html
Posted by: plasticspam | 08 October 2006 at 21:43