Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto: A Collection of Essays from the Bleeding Edge of Publishing 1st Edition by Hugh McGuire (PDF)

Description

The ground beneath the book publishing industry dramatically shifted in 2007, the year the Kindle and the iPhone debuted. Widespread consumer demand for these and other devices has brought the pace of digital change in book publishing from “it might happen sometime” to “it’s happening right now”—and it is happening faster than anyone predicted.Yet this is only a transitional phase. Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto is your guide to what comes next, when all books are truly digital, connected, and ubiquitous. Through this collection of essays from thought leaders and practitioners, you’ll become familiar with a wide range of developments occurring in the wake of this digital book shakeup:Discover new tools that are rapidly transforming how content is created, managed, and distributedUnderstand the increasingly critical role that metadata plays in making book content discoverable in an era of abundanceLook inside some of the publishing projects that are at the bleeding edge of this digital revolutionLearn how some digital books can evolve moment to moment, based on reader feedback

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: About the Author Hugh McGuire works somewhere between book publishing and the web. He’s the founder of PressBooks.com, iambik audiobooks, and LibriVox.org and is co-founder of Book Oven and Bite-Size Edits. He writes about the future of publishing in places such as Forbes.com, O’Reilly Radar, and the Huffington Post.A publishing veteran with 25 years of consulting, management and operational experience, Brian O’Leary is founder and principal of Magellan Consulting Partners, whose clients include major media firms as well as smaller and not-for-profit entities with significant publishing and media commitments.The firm’s practice areas include operational improvement, revenue development, market analysis and business planning. Work done by the firm most often results in both immediate and mid-term changes in processes, structures and in some cases technologies used to produce client content. For Magellan clients, Mr. O’Leary has also written several business plans to guide start-up and growth opportunities.Prior to starting Magellan Media, Mr. O’Leary served as senior VP and associate publisher with Hammond Inc., an internationally recognized geographic reference publisher. Responsible for editorial content, database development, production and operations, Mr. O’Leary restructured editorial operations to benefit from the firm’s prior technology investments. He also substantially increased the pace of the company’s new-product development efforts.Before Hammond, Mr. O’Leary directed operations at several of Time Inc.’s weekly magazines and was part of the team that launched Entertainment Weekly. He joined the firm in 1983, after earning an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Mr. O’Leary also holds an A.B. in chemistry from Harvard College.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I found this book pretty interesting, as someone who regularly self-publishes ebooks and teaches others to do the same. Many of the trends and ideas included are still relevant and futuristic today, about 5 years after publication. But like all books on technology and innovation, the world has caught up, and many of the predicted trends have come and gone, or in some cases, never materialized. About 40% of the links are now dead, for example, which doesn’t bode well for the future of highly networked ebooks. I think overall it’s a great compilation, but there’s probably other more recent books that do a better job of bringing someone up to date on this quickly changing topic.

⭐”Nothing stays the same but everything is connected.” The world we’re in now is very different structurally, and one of the big changes is that it’s not entirely fruitful to think of e-books as ‘sub-paperbacks’. They function differently. ‘Book’ is a lucid, brilliant, even literate exposition of the gains and losses possible in what’s evolving. There is nothing like it.

⭐Every contributor to this book has a stake in the publishing industry. They all come together to create a coherent piece about what’s going on today and what will inevitably be the future of reading and writing books. Highly recommended.

⭐In the walk-it-like-you-write-it mode, contributors to

⭐break conventions. They conceptually and practically cover the current nascent forms of publishing.Most obvious include that this work is in process. The intro material and part one of three is available now. Buy it and you get the upgrades as they are ready. The electronic versions are much cheaper. You can also stumble around on the authors’ site […] to read it for free online, but not take it away.This work lives its content and requires flexible commitment by the reader. Nothing could be more reasonable for authors Huge McGuire (writer/technologist) and Brian O’Leary (publisher/futurist), and their set of essayists. They come from various angles on how books will come to be conceived, designed, written, laid out, distributed, updated and more.This first cut is The Setup: Approaches to the Digital Present. It’s 91 pages at the moment. Coming up are in the next months will be The Outlook: What Is Next for the Book?, and The Things We Can Do with Books: Projects from the Bleeding Edge.Part one tries with fair success at defining the concepts of old and new-style books. Various chapters by different writers cover largely conceptual material, backed up by small to moderate specifics. In the main, a shortcoming is that having set us up for a whiz-bang new world, their uses of links, graphics and other technologies are only so-so.Never mind, their ideas are big and sound.Sure, we’ve all noticed and used ebooks in various formats on disparate platforms. The writers in the manifesto tell us how we got to this point, from technological, artistic and business perspectives. It is well worth wading through the differing voices of part one to get a fix on how format and form, context and content, truly differ and how each affects the present and will affect the future of publishing.Note for example that context is key, above content, already. Writers and publishers are already responding to the new truth that “Increasingly, readers want convenience, specificity, discoverability, ease of access, and connection.” That is bringing with it such features as automated updates and links that go beyond the footnote model. Extra information now has to offer two kinds of new utility. First it must be “immersive” — appearing at a point in the book where it is most useful, and second, it must be nontrivial — “Primary source material, topics not easily discoverable via search engines, or deeply curated dives into ancillary topics represent rewarding additions that readers will want to explore.”That requires a heightened, self-aware level of savvy that the writers claim is in the works.So you can see what’s happened so far and what is in the works, they dive into the related technologies as well as the concepts. There’s a good introduction to a dozen development, publishing and distribution tools with examples. There’s also a tutorial on the benefits and drawbacks of the different digital rights management (DRM) schemes. Distribution, design and metadata each get a section by a different expert.While O’Leary’s Context, not Container piece is self-serving, it is specific about how O’Reilly approached epubs. He details the technologies and distribution methods they used. They clearly were not afraid of jumping in and learning in the process.He criticizes publishers who fumble in this transitional period. Many do in fact just want to figure a way to continue as they have as much as possible, while keeping profit margins. He calls this attitude “container myopia.” He figures that new entrants and existing publishers who get it will thrive by delivering books or book-like-things that let the readers discover in the process, as well as reuse the material. The old minds who simply see digital publishing as a cheaper way to deliver will get left out.Instead, this work includes calls for deep and early tagging, for products that solve readers problems and let them satisfy their curiosity with related material and seems to flow from the content. Publishers will have to adhere to current and emerging standards and encourage reuse of their products. Success should come to those who help readers/purchasers manage abundant information well.This first third is, as they admit up front, a teaser. I want the rest. The epub itself makes a compelling argument for updatable books, purchases that include improved versions as they are ready.I already want more from writer/designer Craig Mod, who framed his section with Everyone asks, “How do we change books to read them digitally?” But the more interesting question is, “How does digital change books?” And, similarly, “How does digital change the authorship process?” He provides examples of divides between products delivered as printed, on an iPhone or Kindle, and on an iPad. The tablet leaps over the limitations of the other deliveries.Another touchstone is Wikipedia. It lets us “develop a text in real time, erasing the preciousness imbued by printing.” Or in futurist terms “Time itself becomes an active ingredient in authorship.”With its flaws, such as fairly lame links, the manifesto is plenty of value in its first third. More please.

⭐Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto is a very interesting and thoughtful collection of essays about what books are, their design and production, their publication, how they get to us, what makes them valuable, and their future. I cannot begin to describe all the varied new information and perspectives these essays contain.If you are at all interested in the future of publishing and the future of books, you will want to read Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto.The essays describe the engineering and the semantic markup language that permits storing of chunks of information for digital publication of ebooks in multiple forms including words in multiple languages, pictures, sounds, and even motion. That’s the easy part.The authors are people who worked in, thought about, and experimented with the creation, distribution, and use of digital information including the interactions that digital information makes possible.Each essay ends with links to give its author feedback or to add your comments. The creation of this book through to the feedback is itself an experiment.Throughout the book there are links to references available on the internet.The first essay, Context, Not Container defines these links as part of the important context information that should be included with the text, but is excluded or at least separated from the text in regular books.I highly recommend that you buy the ebook version of Book: The Futurist’s Manifesto because the links give you quick access to the information you want from the internet. I give the ebook version 5 stars.The printed book is in black and white. It contains some graphs with a narrative that refers to the lines by their color. But, I believe it deserves four stars because it tells you how you can read Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto for free in color on the internet.I received a review book copy from O’Reilly. I started reading the book, and then read some of the book including the graphic parts online. Then I bought an ebook for myself and loved it and because the ebook looked so good, and the links worked so well, I will donate the print book for our November user group raffle. Print books are great for gifts.

⭐I enjoyed it Any was very informal I am glad that they wrote a book like this for I really appreciate it

⭐This book is available online for free at book [.] pressbooks [.] comHead over there for a very interesting read.

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