E-books, Digital Media and Publishing

Last fall, Teresa Sturgess (MACT 2011) and I thought we'd focus on e-books and publishing as the topic of an assignment in Comm 505. We didn't realize we were jumping into a huge topic that would introduce us to people like Robert Darnton, just about the most erudite librarian you're ever likely to meet who writes extensively on the history of the book, EPUB 3.0, XML, the future of academia and the technology behind a touchscreen. Besides wrinkling my brow trying to come up with a definition for an object as ubiquitous as 'book' and then realizing that others were also struggling, the essay was a wonderful jumping off point for New Media Narratives. I'm really looking forward to your comments, not least because we will be presenting this paper at the Media Ecology conference this June and need the practice answering questions about what we meant when we said x, y and z.

In my Delicious stack, I've provided a link to the blog on my webpage where you can find our paper "The Emerging Importance of the E-book and its Impact on Publishing." 

The second link is to a podcast interview by Trebor Scholz with Kathleen Fitzgerald, editor of the Media Common and an academic who invited online reviews of her latest book before publishing it. She argues that academia needs to change how it views academic work and reach "across the border between the academy and the public."  

The third reading is one recommended by Andy Campbell of Dreaming Methods. "Publishing and the Digital Revolution" is by Edward Picot delves deeper into many of the issues that Teresa and I touch on in our paper, including the crisis traditional publishers find themselves in and the merging platforms for e-books.  Picot also provides an interesting overview and examples of new media writing.



E-books, Digital Media and Publishing
3 links stacked by judithdyck | 1 views