On the most recent Media Hacks, Mitch asked, “what is a book?” We had one of those semantic debates: a book is pages with text on them, bound together, vs. a book is the stuff in those pages, displayed however you like, and maybe much more besides (see Enhanced Editions, for instance).
As a recently-published book author (of the excellent Six Pixels of Separation), Mitch took the strong position that a book is pages and text, bound together with a cover. Other things – ebooks, audiobooks, ebooks with video & dancing elephants – are just not books.
I’m less of a purist, of course. I’ve read numerous books on my iphone, and though I do like to buy the paper copy as well, my iphone reading is no less book-reading than my paper reading.
I’ve pitched before that we should make the following distinction, since when you are talking about these things you want to be able to tell the difference:
- ebooks are electronic books
- bookbooks are paper books
- book is the species; ebooks, bookbooks, audiobooks, etc are genera
In any case, I’m not sure that the debate really matters. What we call the thing isn’t so important, is it?
The bigger question is: what is a book for. And are there better ways to help a “book” do what it’s supposed to do? O’Reilly’s Andrew Savikas argued recently that many are looking at things totally upside down when they ask: “How can we replicate a book on an iphone?” I agree totally, but let me quote Andrew directly:
The bigger issue I see is that thinking of the problem as “how do we get a textbook onto an iPhone” is framing it wrong. The challenge is “how do we use a medium that already shares 3 of our 5 senses — eyes, ears, and a mouth — along with geolocation, color video, and a nearly-always-on Web connection to accomplish the ‘job’ of educating a student.” That’s a much more interesting problem to me than “how do we port 2-page book layouts to a small screen.” [more...]
So again, I think asking and trying to answer the question, “What is a book?” is the wrong sort of thing to spend time on. What a book “is” doesn’t matter.
What matters is how we – readers, publishers, technologists – achieve what we want. At one point, reading a bookbook (or having it read to you) was the best (certainly the cheapest and most efficient) way to get the information contained in a book transferred into your brain. But bookbooks aren’t the only game in town anymore.
And all of us have to start asking: what are books for? And can we do that thing they are for any better with new technologies and creativity? In some cases, the answer will be no. In others, certainly it’ll be yes. The real new value in publishing will come as we find new and better ways to do whatever it is books are for; and, I’ll bet that in some cases, the good old bookbook will be the best tool for doing what books are for. Whatever that is.
Speaking of which, what is a book for?
[pic by Brett Jordan]
9 Comments
Beautiful question – What books are for is much more interesting and insightful than what a book is.
Oddly, I had a similar vein of thought this morning and wrote about it on my own literary blog – maybe something is in the air?
Books inspire me to get of the couch, to go out into the world and try something new. And vice versa – doing things inspires me to learn more about them. I only focused on one specific area (seeing a burlesque show, reading about its history, and now about to take a class). Even if it’s just a life philosophy, that’s the purpose of books, to inspire. And there’s too much out there for one person to do it all, so books are the medium in which learn and and get inspiration from.
During the ebook scare of the late ’90s, I remember sitting through a panel at the Waterside publishing conference where paper books were referred to as p-books, which sounds too close to pee books for my liking.
Book (liber etc.) once meant scroll. It’s a (slowly) moving target. There already is a word for what you are calling a bookbook: codex.
The more I think about it, the more semantic I tend to get (meaning I agree with what you said about me).
Think about it this way though, if someone sent you a 10,000 document to read on your iPhone, is that a book or a document?
If it’s a book, why?
OK, that comment was typed way to fast – let me try again:
The more I think about it, the more semantic I tend to get (meaning I agree with what you said about me).
Think about it this way though, if someone sent you a 10,000 word document that was a story (beginning, middle and end) to read on your iPhone, is that a book or a document?
If it’s a book, why?
So yes, I’m still struggling with what makes something a book too.
“And what is a book? Most of us think of books as physical objects: words and sometimes images written or printed on a thin, flexible surface which has ususally been folded, cut, and bound. But if books were merely that, then a telephone directory or mail-order catalogue would qualify as much as Don Quixote or the Canterbury Tales. To those who know and love them, books are recognizable, as forests are, and cities, by their structure (branching and rebranching), their complexity (huge), and their size (big enough to get lost in). A book is usually something we can carry in one hand, yet if it is a real book it is larger than we are: a city or forest of words that can feed us and swallow us up and transform us. A book is not a catalogue or list; it has to make more sense than that. it is not a stack of cordwood but a tree: a branching, leafing, flowering structure, unfolding in the mind, where it can find the space it needs.” – Robert Bringhurst, The Surface of Meaning: Books and Book Design in Canada.
@chrstina: Book as inspiration – I agree (for certain kinds of books, anyway), but what makes a book different than a song? Or a museum? Text, mostly. So: a book is an edited piece of text assembled as a whole, discrete work; meant to convey a long-form story, or grouping of stories; or a complex, linked set of ideas. And the book is “for” conveyance of those stories/ideas, mainly using text.
How does that sound?
@xian: yes, codex; though 75% (95%? 99%?) of people won’t know what that is, in the context e vs p. Hence I like bookbook ;-)
@Mitch: I think it has to do with the coherence of the text as a single, discrete, edited work. A bunch of words won’t cut it; there needs to be significant thought that goes into the final product. That is what distinguishes Six Pixels the book from the blog: not the pages & cover, but rather the thought and effort that went into creating a stand-alone, self-contained piece of work … whereas a blog is a continuous, never-ending thing.
@John: Ha! Indeed … that too!
ok, let me know when you get this all figured out,
and get back to coding functionality into bookoven.
-bowerbird
Mitch’s argument reminds me of G.E. Moore. Here is a book. Here is another book. So book publishing must exist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_is_a_hand
people learn new words all the time. why make them learn bookbook?