Right Content, Right Medium

Throughout the term, we have been discussing literacy and transliteracy revolving around the question of how we have changed the way we consume and produce content in an era of advancing communications technology. A significant underlying tension in our readings and discussion has been the use of print media versus digital media.

Through focusing on transliteracy and examining new media narratives, it has become clear that those who use new media effectively have moved beyond the format of text to communicate ideas using a variety of formats: text, visual, audio, animation, video and interactive content. But perhaps in retrospect it is a good idea to look back at the format of text and how new media is changing the way we explicitly interact with it in the new digital age.

In the article, A Book Club of Billions: 52 Ways to Die in a Cave and Other Lessons in Social Media Marketing, Tammy Nam discusses how two book publishers have used social media to promote their works. In the case of James Tabor’s book Blind Descent, the publishers produced a two page Scribd document that was distributed virally to help push book sales. The book Marijuana is Safer by Steve Fox, Paul Armentano and Mason Tvert, was actually released in full and for free on Sribd. In two days, “the book was read more than 100,000 times and downloaded more than 11,000 times” (Nam, 2010). According to Nam, these publishers, “are using Scribd to take advantage of what's so great about the web for book marketing” (2010).

In the article Google puts $1m into academic research projects for digitised books, Jemima Kiss shows how Google is working to digitize older print content and to add relevant geographic content to the files. “Researchers say the project will help to open up interested in history, classics and archaeology, but will also help develop new tools and research methods as well as expertise in using data in this way” (Kiss, 2010).

It is well recorded that people read differently with digital text than they do with printed text. There is a higher propensity to scanning material and there is a bias toward shorter pieces. For me, in an attempt to sum up the term, there needs to be a recognition for the benefits and limitations of each media. It would be ineffective to simply publish a book or long academic article that is meant for attentive sustained reading in a digital form that looks identical to its published form. The use of new media should take advantage of all of the strengths that the media offers – in integrating video, sound, animation and interactivity. The richness of the content will come not from the length of the text but instead from the accompanying media. The corollary is also true, formats that require and work well with long text are best served in traditional print. Academic pieces that require in depth consideration and attention as well as vivid fiction for which the imagination on the reader is vital should remain in print formats.

To Jessica, the authors that we spoke with and my classmates, thanks for this course.


References:

Nam, Tammy H. (2010, July). “A Book Club of Billions: 52 Ways to Die in a Cave and Other Lessons in Social Media Marketing.” The Huffington Post. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tammy-h-nam/a-book-club-of-billions-e_b_645527.html.

Kiss, Jemima. (2010, July). “GooglePuts $1m into Academic Research Projects for Digitised Books.” The Guardian. Retreived from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2010/jul/14/google-books-funding-re%20%20guardian.co.uk.

Ebook Trends: Info Pro Perspectives

Given this week's lecture notes and readings, I thought you'd all find this of interest:

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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

Doug Gibson & e-books

Yesterday evening, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Douglas Gibson, who has been the editor and/or publisher for a many famous Canadian authors, most recently at the head of McLelland & Stewart.  He was presenting his new book, Stories about Storytellers, and it was entertaining, indeed. At the end, there was a Q&A, and someone else beat me to the question of the future of  the publishing industry with the advent of e-books. However, I did tape his response on my flipcam.