The Form of the Book

The Form of the Book Angus Phillips (bio) and Miha Kovač (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution With the introduction of new platforms for reading and engaging with the printed word in recent decades, book lovers might be forced to wonder: Is this a book? The authors mull the protean transformations of books and the ongoing evolution of print culture. FOR MOST PEOPLE the book still means the printed book. It is familiar as an object and has shown great resilience in the face of competition from other media and attempts at the book's reinvention in digital form. Comparison with digital content has led to a renewed emphasis on the production quality of printed books, as publishers see the value for readers of the design, paper, and illustrations. The book in digital form has been the subject of much experimentation, but what is striking is that the most commercially successful format is the vanilla ebook, mirroring the structure of the printed book. Catching up fast is the audiobook, a growing area of publishing. For example, in Sweden audiobooks now outsell print books, and in many countries the growth rate of audio is the highest of any sector of the industry. Audio is attracting new audiences and new projects are commissioned directly for this format, some moving beyond the single narrator to offer more theatrical performances. Meanwhile the arrival of AI (artificial intelligence) is spreading ripples through the publishing ecosystem, with the potential for machines to read for us and to write convincing narratives. If those set on burning books were going to get to work, would they choose an ebook or a CD-ROM? No, they would head to the nearest library or bookshop to source some printed material. Clearing someone's Kindle or hacking an online library does not make a strong enough statement. The printed book remains the most visible and central form of the book, and during the Covid pandemic bookshelves became the backdrop to many a Zoom call. The printed book is also a reliable technology. The printed text benefits from the economies of scale available from the printing press, and its boundaries are set by the production system. A physical product can be owned and passed round friends and family; in the digital era, it has become a refuge from screens for office workers or parents seeking amusement for their children. Giving a physical book as a present says something both about the recipient but also the giver. The book in print confers status and symbolic capital. Russian oligarchs may never open a book but still want to fill their libraries with leather-bound volumes; chic cafés play vinyl records and use books to decorate the walls. In his 1979 poem "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home," Craig Raine called print books Caxtons, "mechanical birds with many wings." Printed books [End Page 54] come in many formats and production values, from pocket editions to luxury collector editions. That variety in print is now enhanced by experimentation with digital technology to transform the book. THE DIGITAL BOOK Books have been presented on CD-ROM, as apps, and as enhanced ebooks with multimedia. The high costs of such projects, against relatively low sales and low retail prices, have so far proved largely unsustainable in consumer markets. However, in educational and academic markets, digital content and services have replaced many print products. In the 1990s, when the digital book began to be developed commercially, the view was that in this new format, the book could take off in many directions. The use of hyperlinks would enable books to connect to a host of external content, from text and image archives to live video streams. Of course, this was not the book's future and the internet itself now offers this functionality, and much reference and other content has shifted online. In turn, books retain their promise of permanence and internal consistency, preferring not to send readers off on tangents. Click for larger view View full resolution The most successful digital transformation so far has been the vanilla ebook, reproducing the look of the printed page. For enthusiastic consumers of genre fiction, this type of...