August 2009 ISSN 1534-0937 Walt Crawford
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Cites & Insights Crawford at Large Libraries • Policy • Technology • Media Sponsored by YBP Library Services Volume 9, Number 9: August 2009 ISSN 1534-0937 Walt Crawford Perspective I also don’t believe long-form narrative is inhe- rently superior for all purposes; in fact, I’m cer- Writing about Reading 3 tain it isn’t. I do believe book-length fiction and nonfiction continue to be important as one The theme for this issue may be rethinking books and element of reading and media, and that long- rethinking reading—which means it’s time to discuss form narrative is an unusually good way to ebooks and ebook readers. Not just ebooks and ebook communicate difficult and subtle topics. readers, but it’s fair to say that the first ebook readers Now, on to some of what’s being said and how I think with sales in the hundreds of thousands have kindled it might fit together. But first… (sorry) lots of discussion about the connections among device, format, text and reader. Facetiæ Robert Lanham contributed a charmer at McSweeney’s Beliefs and Biases Internet Tendency in the form of an “Internet-age writ- In case you’re not familiar with my beliefs in this area, ing syllabus and course overview”: ENG 371WR: a few key points: Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era I do not believe print books and the long (www.mcsweeneys.net/2009/4/20lanham.html). Excerpts narrative form are endangered—not by alitera- from this visionary piece: cy, not by attention deficit preference, certainly not by ebooks. Inside This Issue I believe, and have long said, that ebooks and Offtopic: 50 Movie Comedy Classics, Part 1 .................... 17 ebook readers can and should have substantial Making it Work: Library 2.0 Revisited ............................. 25 markets where they can do the job better than As print takes its place alongside smoke signals, print books, without necessarily displacing the cuneiform, and hollering, there has emerged a new li- majority of print books. terary age, one in which writers no longer need to I regard “inevitable” as a nonsensical and damag- feel encumbered by the paper cuts, reading, and ex- ing argument. It isn’t “inevitable” that print books cessive use of words traditionally associated with the will disappear because digital transmission is writing trade. Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era focuses on the creation of short-form prose that is cheaper. It’s never been inevitable that a new me- not intended to be reproduced on pulp fibers… dium entirely displaces an older medium. I also Students will acquire the tools needed to make their have a simple reaction when someone dismisses tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, any questioning of new technology or changes on their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, the basis that such questioning has, sometimes, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithi- been wrong in the past. That argument isn’t an ness. All without the restraints of writing in complete argument; it’s sloganeering. sentences. w00t! w00t! I don’t have a horse in this race. I buy few print Throughout the course, a further paring down of the books, and most of those I do buy are mass- Hemingway/Stein school of minimalism will be em- market paperbacks. If people decide they prefer phasized, limiting the superfluous use of nouns, ebooks, more power to them. (I read quite a few verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, gerunds, library books, in print form. I don’t travel enough and other literary pitfalls. to be a target customer for ebook readers.) Cites & Insights August 2009 1 Prerequisites include “Early 21st-Century Literature: used a web-like model of standalone pages, each of 140 Characters or Less,” “Advanced Blog and Book which can be read alone (or at most in a group of two Skimming” and “Internet-Age Surrealistic Narcissism or three), to impart key points, highlight interesting and Self-Absorption.” A few of the weekly topics: techniques or the best applications for a given task. Because the basics are so easy, there’s no need to repeat Week 2: Printing words isn’t good for the envi- them, as so many technical books do. Instead, we can ronment. Students will evaluate why, as BuzzMa- rely on the reader to provide (much of) the implicit chine founder Jeff Jarvis articulates, “Paper is where narrative framework, and jump right to points that words go to die.”… they might not have thought about. Week 4: The Kindle Question. Is Amazon’s wireless He also wanted speed, and plans to update the book reading device the Segway of handheld gadgets? Should it be smaller, come with headphones, and with each printing. Since he loves PPT and “pictures play MP3s instead of display book text? as visual bullets,” why not just publish a PowerPoint Week 6: 140 Characters or Less. Students will ac- presentation? There’s a lot more here about how won- quire the tools needed to make their tweets come derfully O’Reilly has done modularity in the past, alive with shallow wit… throwing in things like “crowdsourcing” and criticiz- Week 8: New Rules. Students will analyze the pub- ing others (and, a little bit, himself) for not making lishing industry and learn how to be more innovative online books more weblike. than the bards of yesteryear. They’ll be asked to con- The result: a 240-page slightly undersized trade sider, for instance, Thomas Pynchon. How much paperback, full color, with lots of Twitter screen shots more successful would Gravity’s Rainbow have been if and, based on the 40-page preview at the URL above, it were two paragraphs long and posted on a blog be- not too much text. $20 from O’Reilly (or $16 for the neath a picture of scantily clad coeds?.. ebook), less from Amazon. There’s more great stuff, including the RBBEAW (raised Reinventing the book? O’Reilly’s never been by Boomers, everyone’s a winner) grading system, with known for modest ambitions. He wasn’t the first to six grades from A+ down to A----. On the other hand, create a book using PowerPoint, according to one the syllabus is 1,310 words long—which, for someone comment. Lots of comments, as you’d expect. One acing Week 6, means “TL;DR” (too long, didn’t read). notes that not being weblike—”the absence of links Tim writes a book and collaborative noise”—is a strength of printed That’s actually the title of the rejoinder—a same-day books (for some kinds of content). Another notes that comment based on Tim O’Reilly’s grandiosely-titled “the old model of a sustained narrative” is exactly why April 29, 2009 post, “Reinventing the Book in the Age people like his books. There’s plenty of cheerleading. of the Web” (radar.oreilly.com/2009/04/reinventing-the- I’m not saying this form doesn’t make sense for book-age-of-web.html). The post isn’t facetious (appar- this book—it might indeed. Not that there haven’t ently); the rejoinder almost certainly is. been loads of books in the past with little choppy O’Reilly waxes enthusiastic about the “turning chapters that could be read independently, even if point” marked by the Kindle and Stanza, but he re- they weren’t created using PowerPoint. It’s hard to gards putting books onto electronic devices as “a lot take “reinventing the book” seriously, though. like pointing a camera at a stage play, and calling it a Nicholas Carr had a little fun with The Twitter movie.” He notes the innovations in movie making Book in the April 29, 2009 Rough type post whose title since filmed plays and credits YouTube with “pushing appears as a subheading above (www.roughtype.com/) the envelope even further.” Now it’s time to reinvent The piece begins: the book. Not “add another option to the many forms Tim wrote a book. The title of Tim’s book is The Twitter of books,” but reinvent the book. Book. Tim didn’t use a pen to write his book. Tim didn’t In our work at O’Reilly as authors and publishers, even use a word processor to write his book. Tim used we’ve long been interested in exploring how the on- PowerPoint to write his book. Tim wrote his book very line medium changes the presentation, narrative and fast, as fast, he says, as he writes “a new talk.” There are structure of the book, not just its price or format. pictures in Tim’s book. Pictures, Tim says, “are a me- morable, entertaining way to tell a story.” What’s his big experiment? The Twitter Book— Another couple of excerpts (it’s not a long post): ”authored in powerpoint.” Tim’s book is a lot easier to read, too. “Most books The web has changed the nature of how we read and still use the old model of a sustained narrative as learn. Most books still use the old model of a sustained their organizational principle,” Tim says. Tim’s book narrative as their organizational principle. Here, we’ve uses “a modular structure.” Following “a sustained Cites & Insights August 2009 2 narrative” is hard… I like the web. I’m glad that per/printing/binding of most books costs about books are going to be more like the web. I’m glad $2.00…so if we were to follow the actual costs in es- that Tim wrote a book. tablishing pricing, a $26.00 “physical” book would The third comment is from Tim O’Reilly, and seems to translate to a $24.00 e-book.