{"id":3994,"date":"2011-04-29T09:26:11","date_gmt":"2011-04-29T09:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994"},"modified":"2011-05-01T09:28:30","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T09:28:30","slug":"what-is-the-future-of-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994","title":{"rendered":"What is the future of books?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

At a recent conference, I talked<\/a> about what books might look like in the near future, with the focus<\/a> on mobile devices such as the iPad. I ended by asserting that it is a very exciting time to be an aspiring book author, with one’s hands on (what matters), the content<\/strong><\/em>. Ways of expressing that content are currently undergoing an explosion of new metaphors, and we might even expect some of them to succeed! But content is king, as they say.<\/p>\n

Here I list only some innovative solutions which have emerged in the last year or so, but which also raise important issues which we ignore at our peril.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. TouchPress<\/a> were one of the first publishers to get off the mark with their living books<\/em>. Their first offering was The Elements<\/strong>, deriving from an earlier interactive display of the periodic table (an example of which can be seen in the entrance to the chemistry building at Imperial College). It is a programmed book, in the sense that the content is expressed using code written by the publisher (very much in the manner of interactive games).<\/li>\n
  2. Next to appear were Inkling<\/a>, who describe their offering as interactive. <\/em>Their approach is described in a blog<\/a> written by their founder,\u00a0Matt Macinnis. There he talks about The Art of Content Engineering<\/em>, which again makes it sound as if authoring a book is in effect programming it! (I know what he means; if you follow the link to the talk I allude to above, you may spot that it too is, at least in part, programmed, and not simply written). Inkling also promote the book as part of a social network, with readers able to annotate the content, and share that annotation with others.<\/li>\n
  3. The latest company to change the way books are both read and authored is Pushpoppress<\/a>, the heart of which is also an interactive app<\/em>.<\/li>\n
  4. Then there is the epub3 format<\/a>. This is a free and open standard for e-books. This third revision in particular is meant to enhance interactivity.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Something of a common theme so far. Books are going to be interactive! But what about these issues?<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Each of the first three (commercial) publishers above has adopted their own programming format. Although HTML5<\/a> may be at the heart of some of this, programming may also mean control (in the sense that the creative industries must put control of their content at the heart of what they do). Each of the first three above sound like a closed system, and extracting re-usable content<\/a> is, I argue, an essential part of doing science. I am just a tad worried that the approaches exemplified above may not allow this to happen.<\/li>\n
    2. Suppose you manage to acquire a chemistry textbook in any of the four approaches listed above. Will they inter-operate, in the sense of being able to extract data from one and perhaps inject it into another? Or will each be a data- or information silo, rigidly controlled by the creative content generator (whoever that is)?<\/li>\n
    3. What might an aspiring author, intent on creating interactive content do? Should they go closed\/proprietary or open? They will clearly need to retrain themselves. We have indeed come a long way along the road: hand-written manuscript \u2192 typed manuscript\u00a0\u2192 word-processed manuscript\u00a0\u2192 interactive app! Like computer games, is the day of the single-authored book rapidly fading, to be replaced by a large team, each with their own tasks to perform?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      I end with this question. Is the era of books, just like the Web itself, going to be the app? And who will be able to (find the time) to participate?<\/p>\n\n<\/div> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      At a recent conference, I talked about what books might look like in the near future, with the focus on mobile devices such as the iPad. I ended by asserting that it is a very exciting time to be an aspiring book author, with one’s hands on (what matters), the content. Ways of expressing that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":5,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[522,524,521,37,523,328,117,525,526,520,373],"ppma_author":[2661],"class_list":["post-3994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemical-it","category-general","tag-aspiring-author","tag-aspiring-book-author","tag-e-books","tag-imperial-college","tag-intent-on-creating-interactive-content-do","tag-ipad","tag-king","tag-matt-macinnis","tag-mobile-devices","tag-social-network","tag-tutorial-material"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat is the future of books? - Henry Rzepa's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is the future of books? - Henry Rzepa's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At a recent conference, I talked about what books might look like in the near future, with the focus on mobile devices such as the iPad. I ended by asserting that it is a very exciting time to be an aspiring book author, with one’s hands on (what matters), the content. Ways of expressing that […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Henry Rzepa's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-04-29T09:26:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-05-01T09:28:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Henry Rzepa\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Henry Rzepa\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What is the future of books? - Henry Rzepa's Blog","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"What is the future of books? - Henry Rzepa's Blog","og_description":"At a recent conference, I talked about what books might look like in the near future, with the focus on mobile devices such as the iPad. I ended by asserting that it is a very exciting time to be an aspiring book author, with one’s hands on (what matters), the content. Ways of expressing that […]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994","og_site_name":"Henry Rzepa's Blog","article_published_time":"2011-04-29T09:26:11+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-05-01T09:28:30+00:00","author":"Henry Rzepa","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Henry Rzepa","Estimated reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994"},"author":{"name":"Henry Rzepa","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2b40f7b9c872a4dc1547e040a11b6281"},"headline":"What is the future of books?","datePublished":"2011-04-29T09:26:11+00:00","dateModified":"2011-05-01T09:28:30+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994"},"wordCount":610,"commentCount":8,"keywords":["aspiring author","aspiring book author","e-books","Imperial College","intent on creating interactive content do","iPad","King","Matt Macinnis","mobile devices","social network","Tutorial material"],"articleSection":["Chemical IT","General"],"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994","url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994","name":"What is the future of books? - Henry Rzepa's Blog","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-04-29T09:26:11+00:00","dateModified":"2011-05-01T09:28:30+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2b40f7b9c872a4dc1547e040a11b6281"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3994#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What is the future of books?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/","name":"Henry Rzepa's Blog","description":"Chemistry with a twist","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-GB"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2b40f7b9c872a4dc1547e040a11b6281","name":"Henry Rzepa","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/897b6740f7f599bca7942cdf7d7914af5988937ae0e3869ab09aebb87f26a731?s=96&d=blank&r=g370be3a7397865e4fd161aefeb0a5a85","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/897b6740f7f599bca7942cdf7d7914af5988937ae0e3869ab09aebb87f26a731?s=96&d=blank&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/897b6740f7f599bca7942cdf7d7914af5988937ae0e3869ab09aebb87f26a731?s=96&d=blank&r=g","caption":"Henry Rzepa"},"description":"Henry Rzepa is Emeritus Professor of Computational Chemistry at Imperial College London.","sameAs":["https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8635-8390"],"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?author=1"}]}},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pDef7-12q","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5218,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=5218","url_meta":{"origin":3994,"position":0},"title":"Science publishers (and authors) please take note.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"October 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I have for perhaps the last 25 years been urging publishers to recognise how science publishing could and should change. My latest thoughts are published in an article entitled \"The past, present and future of Scientific discourse\" (DOI: 10.1186\/1758-2946-3-46). Here I take two articles, one published 58 years ago and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chemical IT"","block_context":{"text":"Chemical IT","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3183,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=3183","url_meta":{"origin":3994,"position":1},"title":"Embedding molecules in blogs: ChemDoodle, WebGL and SVG","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"December 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"If you get a small rotatable molecule below, then ChemDoodle\/HTML5\/WebGL is working. Why might this be important? Well, the future is mobile, in other words, devices that rely on batteries or other sources of built-in power. This means the power guzzling GPU cards of the past (some reach ~400 Watts!)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chemical IT"","block_context":{"text":"Chemical IT","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6738,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=6738","url_meta":{"origin":3994,"position":2},"title":"“Text” Books in a (higher) education environment.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"May 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Text books (is this a misnomer, much like \"papers\" are in journals?) in a higher-educational chemistry environment, I feel, are at a cross-roads. What happens next? Faced with the ever-increasing costs of course texts, the department where I teach introduced a book-bundle about five years ago. The bundle included all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11402,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=11402","url_meta":{"origin":3994,"position":3},"title":"Blasts from the past and present: altmetrics.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"October 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I reminisced about the wonderfully naive but exciting Web-period of 1993-1994. This introduced the server-log analysis to us for the first time, and hits-on-a-web-page. One of our first attempts at crowd-sourcing and analysis was to run an electronic conference in heterocyclic chemistry and to look at how the attendees visited\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chemical IT"","block_context":{"text":"Chemical IT","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"altmetrics3","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/altmetrics3.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11735,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=11735","url_meta":{"origin":3994,"position":4},"title":"Chemistry data round-tripping. Has there been ANY progress?","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"December 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This is one of those topics that seems to crop up every three years or so. Since then, new versions of operating systems, new versions of programs, mobile devices and perhaps some progress?\u00a0 Right, I will briefly recapitulate. Chemical structure diagrams are special; they contain chemical semantics (what an atom\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chemical IT"","block_context":{"text":"Chemical IT","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7311,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7311","url_meta":{"origin":3994,"position":5},"title":"QR codes and InChI strings.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"July 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A month or so ago at a workshop I was attending, a speaker included in his introductory slide a QR (Quick Response) Code. It is a feature of most digital eco-systems that there is probably already \"an app for it\". So I thought I would jump on the band wagon\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chemical IT"","block_context":{"text":"Chemical IT","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/chart-2.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"authors":[{"term_id":2661,"user_id":1,"is_guest":0,"slug":"admin","display_name":"Henry Rzepa","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/897b6740f7f599bca7942cdf7d7914af5988937ae0e3869ab09aebb87f26a731?s=96&d=blank&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3994"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fppma_author&post=3994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}