Books were the topic of an Achtung column about a year ago. I’m coming back to them not only because of my personal interest (yes, I do have more books than I could ever read), but also because what actually constitutes a book is very much under discussion.
Apparently, we have reached a world of ‘post-digital-publishing’, in which all books are produced digitally to a large degree, whether they then get printed on to paper or made into documents for screens. The competition is not between print and electronic books any more, but between all types (sic) of media that present text and images. And these images don’t necessarily always have to be stills.
A recent monograph of Gutenberg by Stephan Füssel, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject, has been published as what is termed an e-book-plus. Gutenberg speaks to us (if not live) in audio and video sequences, which enrich the book throughout. The chapter about making movable type – Gutenberg’s most significant invention – opens up and shows movable letters in moving images.
Füssel still calls this a book, and the enhanced e-book is accompanied by a large foliant, a hardcover and a simple paperback. Paperbacks were frowned on in the Sixties when I went to university, just as e-books are today. They certainly threaten the existence of books for quick consumption, which is what paperbacks were invented for.
Authors will no longer be people who deliver words only. Electronic media don’t need to restrict content to a given space, length or size. A traditional book is linear, an enclosed experience. Printing errors (which normally are typesetting mistakes) have to wait for another edition that has to be distributed anew, making previous versions redundant or a collector’s item. The page ends where the paper ends.
Outside of the book’s margins is where its environment began. Video sequences inside an e-book bring this environment into the book itself, opening up windows – actually doors – through which the reader enters another medium. In traditional books, footnotes were supposed to direct the reader to other books, but that required physical effort, if only to get them.
There are publishers who have already moved beyond e-books. They don’t believe in a fixed format, albeit an electronic one which again needs a dedicated device. They are interested in finding out how different readers perceive a text and what they may want to share with other readers or authors. Websites such as medium.com curate contributions from authors, inviting notes and comments that go beyond the normal heckling from ever-present trolls. The financial model of these sites would be another topic for discussion. So far, authors don’t get paid.
The world of post-digital publishing doesn’t have room for exclusive formats anymore. This is already leading to books reassuring their heritage by starting to experiment with materials and content alike. The increased interest in type and typography has given rise to not only better design of the actual pages rather than just the covers, but also to many titles about the aesthetics of books, their history and their future.
Publishers who think they have a strong brand because all their books carry the same logo should watch out. Branding will mean developing a unique attitude about content and its appropriate presentation, rather than merely pushing out letters on paper. Books are here to stay, but what they’ll look like is anyone’s guess.
