| Compiled by Chris Armstrong, Consultant & Trainer, e: lisqual@cix.co.uk w: http://www.i-a-l.co.uk b: http://i-a-l.blogspot.com/
Wikipedia, a form of e-book with which many readers will be familiar is in fact a special sub-genre of an e-book: the social or networked book. In the last few years, social or communal computing (generally dubbed Web 2.0) has extended to the e-book, so that we can define a sub-genre of the born-digital e-book as the social or networked book.
The first born digital e-books are epitomised by City Sites: Multimedia Essays on New York and Chicago, 1870s-1930s (http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/citysites/) . It is noteworthy because of its use of the medium: it includes in its virtual pages sound clips, images, moving images, and pop-up annotations and citations. But it is most interesting because it offers several different ways of moving through the text. Linear reading has moved on to hyperlinked snippets and topical pathways which move from essay to essay as they follow a particular theme. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) started in 2001 and was perhaps the next great move forward in e-books. It is a large and successful experiment in social book development. Anyone can add to its pages and we are all editors of existing content. But there are other examples of social books.
More recently the proliferation of blogs has produced a new phenomenon: dubbed 'blooks', books written on blogs as a series of posts are an interesting experiment in iterative publishing. Journalist Richard Poynder's The Basement Interviews (http://poynder.blogspot.com/) is built on a series of interviews with luminaries of open access. Readers are asked to pay US$8 for each interview they download and read, and the whole may be subsequently published as a paper-based book. Pulse by Robert Frenay (http://www.pulsethebook.com/index.php) is published both as a blog, which invites reader votes for each chapter, although apparently not comments, and by Farrar, Straus and Giroux as a paper book.
A similar approach comes from L Lee Lowe, who published a series of short stories for "young adults of all ages" on the Into the Lowelands blog (http://lowelands.blogspot.com/). The stories are powerful and if any reader needs convincing that fiction can be read on the screen, 'Noise' will hold them gripped. The short stories were followed by serialized novels: the equally-powerful Mortal Ghost (http://mortalghost.blogspot.com/2006/07/chapter-one.html), which is complete and Corvus (http://corvus-lowe.blogspot.com/) for which only the first Chapter is available (09/2007).
The social element of the Web - as also seen in social bookmarking (such as Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/signin/flickr/), Connotea (http://www.connotea.org/) and Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/)), as well as in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) itself, is extending to academic texts, where authors are acknowledging that remote experts may have valuable contributions to their own thought processes. Professor Lawrence Lessig first wrote Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace in 1999. As he wrote, “after five years in print and five years of changes in law, technology, and the context in which they reside, Code needs an update.” Rather than follow the conventional route Professor Lessig used a wiki to open the editing process to all, thus drawing upon “the creativity and knowledge of the community. This is an online, collaborative book update; a first of its kind...” As the project neared its completion, Professor Lessig took the contents of this wiki and develop it for publication. The resulting book, Code v.2 (http://codev2.cc/) , was published in late 2006 by Basic Books.
In similar vein, Joseph J Esposito has evolved The Platform Book (http://prosaix.com/pbos/book-6-0.html) - based on an earlier essay on "various aspects of the book in the digital era" and created using a Processed Book Operating System. Anyone can annotate the text as they read it - indeed, highlighting a phrase or word immediately causes a drop down menu with choices such as 'Create BookMark', 'Create Note', 'Create OutgoingLink' and 'Create BizVantage Topic'. Previously added annotations are signified by a boxed 'Note' in the right-hand margin. As Mitchell Stephens says of Without Gods :
The blog (http://www.futureofthebook.org/mitchellstephens/) I am writing here, with the connivance of The Institute for the Future of the Book (http://www.futureofthebook.org/), is an experiment. Our thought is that my book on the history of atheism (eventually to be published by Carroll and Graf) will benefit from an online discussion as the book is being written . Our hope is that the conversation will be joined: ideas challenged, facts corrected, queries answered; that lively and intelligent discussion will ensue. And we have an additional thought: that the web might realize some smidgen of benefit through the airing of this process.
Experiments that involve software and interfaces as well as societal involvement in communal text are continuing. Moving away from e-books, AssignmentZero (http://zero.newassignment.net/) is an experimental news site that brings professional journalists together with volunteer researcher-reporters to collaboratively write stories – so-called ‘Crowdsourcing'. Moving further into the e-book community, GAM3R 7H30RY by McKenzie Wark (http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory/) is an entirely new design and an experiment in the delivery of e-books. Once again supported by The Institute for the Future of the Book, GAM3R 7H30RY offers a reading experience designed for the screen as well as the opportunity for discussion with readers. The granular approach to the text means that screen real estate can be managed well and debate focuses on precise areas of content.
The Institute has subsequently made available CommentPress (http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/):
CommentPress is an open source theme for the WordPress blogging engine that allows readers to comment paragraph by paragraph in the margins of a text. Annotate, gloss, workshop, debate: with CommentPress you can do all of these things on a finer-grained level, turning a document into a conversation. It can be applied to a fixed document (paper/essay/book etc.) or to a running blog. …
Over time, we (and hopefully the community) will make improvements and add new features and extensions, all of which will be documented here on this site.
So, the book has evolved a parallel, social form; apart from quite a lot of books written in blogs, there's not much there yet, but there are some very interesting approaches and products emerging. And anyone can do it… with a wiki or a blog!
PDF of Social e-Books Factsheet (24 KB)
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