Posts Tagged "if:book"

Hand Made High Tech

Posted by The Author on 20 Dec, 2011 in Digital Publishing, He Edits, Stuff That Happens | 1 comment

Throughout 2011, if:book Australia commissioned essays from ten Australian writers on the future of writing and reading in a future tilted towards the digital. Each writer drew on his or her experience in fields diverse as publishing, transmedia, gaming, and comics to observe the changes taking place in ‘books’ and discussing where this might lead for authors, readers, and reading culture.

Originally posted at the if:book web site, the articles have now been compiled (some updated) into a single volume under the title Hand Made High Tech with an introduction by me and a brilliant cover design by Daniel Neville.

It’s free to download in any format or to read online. If you have any interest in books and publishing futures, it’s worth a read. Check it out.

Browsing Books: Chattering Incunabula

Posted by The Author on 28 Nov, 2011 in Digital Publishing, Stuff That Happens | Comments Off

In Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame, Claude Frollo looks from a book to the cathedral and says, ‘Ceci tuera cela.’ (‘This will kill that’). Apparently we’ve never been all that good with pluralism (witness the seemingly endless moaning that digital is killing print, regardless of how little hard evidence emerges to support such a position).

The reference to Hugo comes via Books in Browsers speaker, Corey Pressman, who naturally begged to differ when it comes to print and digital books. This does not replace that. This actually does a pretty crappy job of replacing that, because paper and screens do subtly different jobs: one houses fixed text and images, the other is fluid.

Browsing Books: Social Reading

Posted by The Author on 14 Nov, 2011 in Digital Publishing, Stuff That Happens | Comments Off

I recently returned from San Francisco and the fabulous Books in Browsers 2011 conference therein.

I tried hard to keep live tweeting from the event (via the @ifbookaus account), but alas I’m no @ebookish (forever now known as The Thumbs of Fury). I was reduced to desperately taking notes and occasionally copy-and-pasting in the Twitter app.

The event itself is organised by the awesome Peter Brantley and hosted at the Internet Archive. Books in Browsers is a small event attended by some of the finest people at the techie end of publishing (and me). Because of its size and the quality of its attendees, there was no need to waste time arseing around discussions of paper versus screen or on the relative merits of digital workflows. It was like a welcome homecoming.

Column Inches

Posted by The Author on 14 Nov, 2011 in He Writes, Stuff That Happens | Comments Off

I’ve started a regular column in Brisbane newspaper the Courier-Mail pointing to cool or interesting things in the booky-technology area: apps, audiobooks, webby things, and so on.

It appears to be a print-only experience thus far, but locals can check it out in Saturday’s LIFE section.

Each column includes links so, if you can’t get a copy of the paper, you can at least see what’s piquing my interest this week via the link timeline.

L’Odeur des Livres

Posted by The Author on 22 Jun, 2011 in Digital Publishing, Stuff That Happens | Comments Off

I was recently invited to present a soapbox speech at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre as part of the Emerging Writers’ Festival. So I took the opportunity to berate those who espouse the smell of books as a defence of the printed book.

Needless to say, it wasn’t an entirely serious speech. But, at its core, it does have a serious message: the radical transformation at the heart of publishing presents an opportunity for everyone involved in bookishness: from writers to publishers to readers. Morose pining for an idealised past (that never existed) is not the way to face the necessary challenges.

At least that’s what I think.