Links, articles, and webbish ephemera that have passed muster with if:book over the past week or so.

Though his argument buys somewhat into the notion that ‘only one shall survive’, Tim Parks at the New York Review of Books mounts a splendid case in favour of ebooks over print. This article  has been passed around quite a bit in the last week and for good reason. Really, the only significant thing we can add to this is: ‘what he said…’

E-Books Can’t Burn

Only the sequence of the words must remain inviolate. We can change everything about a text but the words themselves and the order they appear in. The literary experience does not lie in any one moment of perception, or any physical contact with a material object (even less in the “possession” of handsome masterpieces lined up on our bookshelves), but in the movement of the mind through a sequence of words from beginning to end.

Something unrelated to technology and publishing if:book is discovering during TOC 2012: engaging with exciting developments in reading, writing, and technology via webcast at three in the morning is much more difficult than we anticipated.

The irony that we would discover that while working on a project called The 24-Hour Book is not lost on us. But that will be totally different, right?

Just as well we have Meg Vann in the correct timezone who can send us almost live notes from events in New York.

From O’Reilly:

The Changing World of Digital Rights & Publishing Agreements

Dana Newman (Dana Newman)

Join Dana Newman as she discusses the changing world of digital rights and publishing agreements. Authors, agents, and publishers alike will appreciate this workshops which promises to offer a clearer understanding of the issues, with a variety of topics to be addressed. Read more.

Our proxy in New York City, Meg Vann, has delivered notes from a presentation by Kristen McLean at the BOOK²CAMP (Book Squared) Unconference. There are a few choice quotes within, but I particularly like the sentiment behind the last line. In a rapidly changing environment, we’re all learning.

Magic Eight Ball: Questions about readers/audience/market that we don’t yet have the tools to discover

This discussion was led by Kristen McLean, a book futurist who focuses on disruptive services and products to flatten the publishing market.

‘Discovery’ usually helps consumers find our book, but what if we apply the term more broadly ‑ to authors and publishers? We could use powerful data tools for insights into our audience, and understand the risk factors better by building a tool to measure it.

The publishing chain usually starts with the author at the top – but it’s possible now to test the market and edit the book in response, to know your audience before writing the book, using ‘forward data’ instead of ‘following data’.

A semi-regular reference to the articles and webby things that have piqued the interest of if:book in the past week or so.

The digitisation of books is not the product of robots. Well, not entirely as The Art of Google Books shows us. Accidents of digitsation are surprising beautiful and compelling. No really.

The aim of this project is twofold; to recognize book digitization as rephotography, and to value the signs of use that accompany these texts as worthy of documentation and study. Ultimately, the startling and diverse adversaria of Google Books merits examination and exhibition.

Articles, posts, and ephemera around the web that have caught if:book’s eye in the last week or so.

Digital Textbooks Go Straight From Scientists to Students by Dave Mosher

FLOW isn’t the first or most feature-rich publication tool, nor is Cachalot the slickest interactive textbook on the market (a market in which Apple just announced its interest). But Johnston’s title is an easy-to-update, “good-enough” product that didn’t require millions of dollars and years of effort to create and manage. A cadre of Duke computer science graduates, in fact, built the platform in one semester on a $5,000 budget.

A quick round up of interesting posts, articles and ephemera crossing the if:book radar. Enjoy.

Apple’s behavior is a modern, sophisticated version of the “embrace, extend, and extinguish” behavior that got Microsoft in so much trouble in the 1990s: Enter a product category supporting a widely used standard, extend that standard with proprietary capabilities, and then use those differences to disadvantage competitors. (The strategy is even more effective if you have a dominant market position in another, related category that you can use for leverage. Think Windows in the 1990s, iPad in 2012.) If you read, write, or publish digital books, you should be concerned.