# Books in the age of the iPad



## FSkornia (Feb 22, 2009)

I wanted to post this here, since I figured a bunch of you will appreciate it. I found the link through the ALA's Perpetual Beta Blog. The writer is a publisher and designer that examines what devices like the iPad (and the Kindle by extension) will mean for the concept of the book and its content. It's interesting to see how he believes storytelling itself will change.
-Frank

Edit: I forgot the link: http://craigmod.com/journal/ipad_and_books/
It's time like this that I wish Gmail's little attachment reminder worked everywhere.
-FS


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## Magenta (Jun 6, 2009)

Great article.  Thank you for sharing.


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## jason10mm (Apr 7, 2009)

Interesting article, primarily for his attempt to put a vocabulary to narrative and visual concepts of print and digital media. Though there are some HUGE errors though, like his bewildering, and perhaps slanderous, statement that the Kindle can ONLY DO TEXT ("The Kindle and iPhone are both lovely — but they only do text."). Where did this notion come from? I can understand this for the iphone, even if a book did have images, the screen size is too small. But the Kindle can display images quite well, provided the e-book is properly formatted to show them!

There are already e-books that take advantage of the digital medium with imbedded audio, hotlinks, etc. But I think these will just be the electronic versions of pop-up books. The book as a linear narrative has been around for CENTURIES, changing the display medium won't render that obsolete. Plus the workload necessary to layer in all that fancy content (of whatever description) will limit it to select artistic endeavors, promotional peices, and things Stephen King does when he is bored.

I've long said that e-readers won't kill DTBs, but they will require that DTB become elaborate collectors editions to merit their cost. Nice to see others thinking along the same lines. In fact, I daresay that coffee table books will increase in popularity, because once you eliminate that row of eclectic, lightly browsed display books on a shelf (to tell visitors that you are well-read) the obvious decorative replacement is a couple of coffee table books implying that you have mastered asian cusine, hiked the mountains of Peru, and breed horses


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