Forget E-Books: The Future of the Book Is Far More Interesting
  BY Adam Penenberg 1 hour, 5 minutes ago
  Coming soon...  It's the end of the book as we know it, and 
you'll be just fine.
  But it won't be replaced by the e-book, which is, at best, a 
stopgap measure.
  [Viral Loop Chronicle #8]
  Take a long hard look at a book, any book.  Pull a favorite off 
a shelf, dust off
the top--maybe it's the Bible, the Koran, a novel by Jane Austen 
or Leo Tolstoy.
  Perhaps you're more into Dan Brown or Jacqueline Winspear 
mysteries, Doris
Kearns Goodwin biographies, or you've dog-eared page after page 
in Skinny Bitch.
  You may even gravitate toward business books like Viral Loop, 
my latest.  Now say
your goodbyes, because there will soon be a day that you may view 
such analog
contrivances as museum pieces, bought and sold on eBay as 
collectibles, or
tossed into landfills.
  Coming -- It's the end of the book as we know it, and you'll be 
just fine.
  But it won't be replaced by the e-book, which is, at best, a 
stopgap measure.
  Sure, a bevy of companies are releasing e-book readers-there's 
Amazon's Kindle,
Barnes and Noble's Nook, and a half dozen other chunks of 
not-ready-for-primetime
hardware.  But technology marches on through predictable patterns 
of development,
with the initial form of a new technology mirroring what came 
before, until
innovation and consumer demand drive it far beyond initial 
incremental
improvements.  We are on the verge of re-imagining the book and 
transforming it
something far beyond mere words.
  Take note: The first battlefield tanks looked like heavily 
armored tractors
equipped with cannons; early automobiles were called "horseless 
carriages" for a
reason; the first motorcycles were based on bicycles; the first 
satellite phones
were as clunky as your household telephone.  A decade ago, when 
newspapers began
serving up stories over the Web, the content mirrored what was 
offered in the
print edition.  What the tank, car and newspaper have in common 
is they blossomed
into something far beyond their initial prototypes.  In the same 
way that an
engineer wouldn't dream of starting with the raw materials for a 
carriage to
design a rad new sports car today, newspapers won't use paper or 
ink anymore.
  Neither will books.  But mere text on a screen, the stuff that 
e-books are made
of, won't be enough.
  The first movie cameras were used to film theater productions.  
It took early
cinematic geniuses like Sergei Eisenstein, Fritz Lang, Charlie 
Chaplin and Abel
Gance to untether the camera from what was and transform it into 
what it would
become: a new art form.  I believe that this dynamic will soon be 
replayed,
except it will star the book in the role of the theater 
production, with authors
acting more like directors and production companies than straight 
wordsmiths.
  Like early filmmakers, some of us will seek new ways to express 
ourselves
through multimedia.  Instead of stagnant words on a page we will 
layer video
throughout the text, add photos, hyperlink material, engage 
social networks of
readers who will add their own videos, photos, and wikified 
information so that
these multimedia books become living, breathing, works of art.  
They will exist
on the Web and be ported over to any and all mobil devices that 
can handle
multimedia, laptops, netbooks, and beyond.  (Hey, Apple, are you 
listening?)
For the non-fiction author therein lie possibilities to create 
the proverbial
last word on a subject, a one-stop shop for all the information 
surrounding a
particular subject matter.  Imagine a biography of Wiley Post, 
the one-eyed pilot
from the 1930's who was the first to fly around the world.  It 
would not only
offer the entire text of a book but newsreel footage from his 
era, coverage of
his most famous flights, radio interviews, schematics of his 
plane, interactive
maps of his journeys, interviews with aviation historians and 
pilots of today, a
virtual tour of his cockpit and description of every gauge and 
dial, short
profiles of other flyers of his time, photos, hyperlinked 
endnotes and index,
links to other resources on the subject.  Social media could be 
woven into the
fabric of the experience -- discussion threads and wikis where 
readers share
information, photos, video, and add their own content to Post's 
story, which
would tie them more closely to the book.  There's also the 
potential for
additional revenue streams: You could buy MP3's of popular songs 
from the 1930's,
clothes that were the hot thing back then, model airplanes, other 
printed books,
DVD's, journals, and memorabilia.
  A visionary author could push the boundaries and re-imagine 
these books in
wholly new ways.  A novelist could create whole new realities, a 
pastiche of
video and audio and words and images that could rain down on the 
user, offering
metaphors for artistic expressions.  Or they could warp into 
videogame-like
worlds where readers become characters and through the expression 
of their own
free will alter the story to fit.  They could come with music 
soundtracks or be
directed or produced by renowned documentarians.  They could be 
collaborations or
one-woman projects.
  Before you add your comment to the comment thread at the end of 
this column, or
hustle off an email to me to vehemently disagree with my vision, 
I want to
emphasize I'm not predicting the end of immersive reading.  I see 
a future in
which immersive reading coexists with other literary, visual and 
auditory modes
of expression.  You get the full book--all the words on the page 
or screen--but
you also get so much more.  And ask yourself: Which would you 
rather have, the
hardcover book of today or this rich, multimedia treatment of the 
same title?
Suddenly mere words on a page may feel a bit lifeless.  And 
remember that today's
youth are tomorrow's book buyers, and they have been brought up 
on a steady diet
of entertainment on demand, with text, photos, and video all 
available at the
click of a mouse.  I'm skeptical that simple text will cut it for 
them.
  Now, I realize that many can't imagine life without a good book 
to curl up with,
but these may be the same people who might have thought they'd 
never forgo the
pop and hiss of vinyl records, jettison the typewriter for a 
laptop, spring for
high speed Internet access, or buy a BlackBerry or iPhone  In an 
earlier age
they might have even resisted adopting the Qwerty keyboard 
(what's wrong with
ink and feathered quill anyway?) And sure, there will be some 
books around.
  After all, even today there exist vinyl records -- just not a 
lot of them.
  As the author of three books, I'm excited by the possibilities.  
Despite all the
doom and gloom surounding newspapers, magazines, and books, I 
think all writers
should be optimistic.  Because where there's chaos, there's 
opportunity.
  And besides, it's inevitable.
  Adam L.  Penenberg is author of Viral Loop: From Facebook to 
Twitter, How Today's
Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves.  A journalism professor at 
the Arthur L.
Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, Penenberg is 
a contributing
writer to Fast Company.
  Copyright Ággc) 2009 Mansueto Ventures LLC.  All rights 
reserved.  Fast
Company, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007-2195


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