Part One

Who hasn’t read a story where you wished you could actually be inside it? See the landscape for yourself, see how the light falls, how the air smells, how the noise overwhelms you, and see exactly how tall that building was that Spiderman just scaled. It’s not that we don’t trust the author and their powers of description, it’s just we want to be there not just read about it, and ultimately we want to tell our own stories of what it was like.

I’ve been obsessing over the idea for a while. Just how could you do it? Then I heard Simon Groth from if:book Australia talk about an app that was under development. The story came in locked segments and, if you wanted to unlock the next bit of the story, you had to be in the place where it happens. Say for example the next bit of the story happened in a train station. You don’t have to be at the exact station in the story (e.g. Grand Central Train Station in NYC) to unlock the next bit, you just have to be in a train station somewhere. As long as there’s a Thomas the Tank Engine near you, you can merrily read away. It was reasoned that being in the right atmosphere made it feel more real.

And the battle begins. It’s Apple and their posse of publishers in one corner and the ‘feds’ in the other. Amazon claims the winnings.

Last week the US Department of Justice sued Apple and five major publishers for price-fixing ebooks. Simon and Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins agreed to settle, which meant terminating their contracts with Apple and allowing retailers to sell titles for a discounted price – a return to more of a wholesale pricing strategy. Penguin and Macmillan will fight the case with Apple.

We’ve heard this question a few times and we’re likely to hear it more in the coming weeks so let’s address some of the reasoning behind the 24-Hour Book and what the hell we expect to achieve.

There have been a couple of 24-Hour Books. The first was in 2009 and the most recent was this year, both organised from the UK and involving if:book London. Each project is different in its focus and end product, but the common thread between them is the use of the timeframe to demonstrate the capabilities and explore the possibilities of working in a digital environment. In every case, we’re hoping to produce something unique to its process, something that couldn’t be reproduced in a more traditional environment.

When people ask me to speak or write about the future of books, invariably what they want to know about are things like ebooks, digital publishing, book apps, transmedia. These are not the future of books. They are the present of books.

To consider the future of books, we must imagine the future of media. We must imagine the future of the web. And for that we must lift the veil and step into the post-digital.

Claims from sources wisely choosing to remain anonymous are pointing towards a settlement with Apple, five major publishers and the US Department of Justice following allegations of price-fixing.

This means the publishers selling e-books with Apple would have their pricing policy changed from the current agency model to one benefiting the e-book retailer competition – e.g. Amazon. Initially reported by The Wall Street Journal, Apple’s current pricing model with publishers is explained:

As Apple prepared to introduce its first iPad, the late Steve Jobs, then its chief executive, suggested moving to an “agency model,” under which the publishers would set the price of the book and Apple would take a 30% cut. Apple also stipulated that publishers couldn’t let rival retailers sell the same book at a lower price.

E-books changing the face of literature, the developments transferable from print to digital seem limitless.

In The Telegraph, Jo-Jo Moyes reports the sales trends of e-books and how the platform’s mass yet edgy appeal is making reading sexy again. The outrageously clear resolution, ergonomic casing and generically trendy look of the latest tablets now have an influence on the author’s work.

E-books may be changing the way we read – and even write. I’m not the only women’s commercial fiction author experiencing an upsurge in the number of male readers. Freed from the trauma of publicly reading a book with a “girlie” cover, men are widening their choices. And one told me that his wife now feels free to read thriller writer Lee Child on her e-reader.

A wider audience is not the only aspect to take into consideration when publishing an e-book, Jo-Jo Moyes also gives evidence of Amazon’s free 10% sample changing the narrative arc of a book. Authors are reportedly inserting a cliffhanger right before the reader is prompted to buy now.

Publishing in an Age of Change is a collaboration between three of Australia’s leading literary incubators: Meanjin, Overland and if:book, that seeks to drive rather than simply react to the debate surrounding the digitization of communication.

‘Agile’ was the buzzword at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing (TOC) conference in New York this February. (While there, I also ate a fantastic catfish po’boy at the Delta Grill in Hell’s Kitchen, but that’s for another blog entirely!)