"Going West" passage animated

Via EW.

On the subject of Atlas

Atlas Shrugged sales are up. BookNinja suggests it's because of the economy. I think it is probably because of Bioshock.

Stop using Twitter for advertising and make your books into video games. This will generate real revenue, publishing industry, and will allow your authors/readers/players to delve further into the worlds you create.

On the future of digital reading and writing

One of my recent columnist crushes is Roy Blount Jr., who wrote a piece about the Kindle for the NYT that states bluntly the same concern every writer has: how is the digital world going to screw us? His answer, for now, is that the rights for audio books need some sort of protection. At the present time, there is no court ruling on how digital devices may use audio rights.

A sort of poem about Born Digital projects by Stephanie Strickland. (via Silliman's blog)

ShortReads launches today. It's like GoodReads, but designed for mobile devices. The idea of using one program on any device is a good one, but I will admit that I think there are better ways to do such a thing. For example, buying directly from a publisher would put you in contact with the community that makes the books you like happen. There are ways to nurture this relationship to work to both parties' advantages. And having a distributor between the two can have disadvantages (cuts the amount the publisher and writer are making, for instance) as well as advantages (I've posted before that we don't have The Perfect book-sharing social network).

A year ago, I would have loved this. Since I tried to enter the industry, it makes me nervous. I don't want a program like this to be successful until it incorporates all of the elements it has the potential to use, because consumers will resist it and it will be even harder to win back their trust. Already the word "e-book" makes people think of the ugly first model of the Kindle, and if Authors' Guilds and writers become convinced that they're losing business to technology, the digital world will lose its most valuable readers and its most creative writers. If we're going to do this, we need to do it well. We need to sort out rights before we lose writers, and we need to add multimedia elements that enhance the reading experience, instead of reading glorified (and expensive) PDFs. Where's the excitement in that?

Time to hook up the holiday microwaves

I am still enamored of this video from AKQA (via SwissMiss and others).

Things to read

1) Jonathan Lethem's review of 2666.

2) The women who took care of Marc Chagall and the way they changed his art. (I'll admit I wish I could look at his art without knowing he left his 19-year-old girlfriend for his best friend, and that he cut his daughter out of his life because of his last wife.)

3) The Golden Notebook. I think I've mentioned our project, but Barack Obama liked it, and perhaps you trust his taste.

What I Want From My eReader: (A Wishlist)

The Kindle is about to be born again, and plenty of people have thoughts for it. I can't blame them. Newspapers are falling apart, book reviews are scarcely published in print, and magazines are investigating the future of eInk, debuting sex columns, and jabbing on another with their covers.

All right, Sony, Amazon, and whoever else is working. Here is what I, your future consumer, desire from the product you are trying to create:

1) Access to the OED, Wikipedia, Google, JStor, and YouTube.

I want to be able to touch a word and bring up articles related to it. But this feature has to be turn-off-able. Sometimes you want to read to connect to people - that's when you read on the internet - and sometimes you want to read to disconnect from everything else - that's when you open a book on the subway. The eReader will have to make both a possibility.

2) Pages you can "turn."

I want to be able to click a corner at the top or bottom of the page to flip forward or flip back.

3) Color, but still those lovely "paper" screens.

Your eyes shouldn't hurt as you read; Amazon got this right. But if you're making a device that allows us on the internet, we have to be able to view the internet for real. Think iPhone.

4) Marginalia.

We should be able to write in the margins of our books, and save the notes. We should also be able to dog-ear pages. I'd love to have a Wikipedia-ish setting where I could access a dialogue within AND outside the text (debating the alternate endings of Great Expectations with other readers). Or view some YouTube interpretations of great books as created by high school students. When I got sick of my honors reading list senior year, I would Google it for a while just to laugh about it. Nothing lights up Beloved like a silent reenactment by some kid's Sims. And nothing makes Benito Cereno quite like Legos. Again, I don't want this feature on ALL the time, but it would be fun to turn on during an all-nighter.



4) Annotated margin notes for an academic setting.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to "log in" to a textbook and read my professor and classmates' notes in the margins. This way professors can assign postings in the margins or on a message board, so students will be able to fully engage with their class as they read.

5) Waterproof pages and an elastic band.

I'm thinking Moleskin 2.0. What if it were pocket-sized, waterproof, and stayed closed with that black elastic band? It would appeal to literate people everywhere, and would gain respect from an older audience. People would see it and get huge technology crushes instantly. It's an aesthetically perfect volume, and connects to a literary history. And when it's closed, it's sealed and safe.

There could be a second one available in the large, slim size for textbooks.

6) Audio technology. Who wouldn't want to hear David Sedaris read his book?

7) Adjustable font size.

8) Paper color that's adjustable. In the mood for papyrus? Water-marked granite? Whatever suits your fancy.

9) Please break away from the prefix "e." Be yourself. Don't be defined by this Appleish internety techno-jargon.

10) This is why I love the idea of eBooks: What if you could purchase short stories for $.99? Literary journals would become more relevant than they have ever been. Just link to short stories by authors next to the authors' names in each search. That way before you buy a book, you can read a short piece to get a sense of tone. When you buy an album on iTunes, you usually buy a single track first. This would be the perfect opportunity to make short stories marketable and relevant.

Okay, Amazon. Please create this device, and maybe by the time you do, I will have a salary to purchase such a device. Thank you! Xoxo, Your Future Consumer

Wednesday Entry abridged

I have finished my first notebook. Filled. In three days at this course.

It is getting late, so here is what I want to share from today:


Please download this program. You absolutely will not regret it. Bob Stein, director of the Institute for the Future of the Book (otherwise known as if:book, a fantastic blog) shared it today in his lecture. It's better than Pagemaker, Powerpoint, or any other media-blending tool out there. The MacArthur Foundation backs this - you should, too.

It's currently known as "Sophie."

Also, when blogs like Alex Itin's enter my life, I remember why I stay up all night scrambling to read the entirety of the internet.