5 ms·

How the invention of the book changed how people read

81 points by diodorus 7y ago

jamesrcole 7y ago
The article discusses the pros and cons of bookrolls and codexes (books), which is interesting, but it doesn't really discuss how books changed how people read.
- m0nty 7y ago
  Joshua Foer goes into this in 'Moonwalking with Einstein', approaching from the view of a would-be mnemonist and how scrolls were far less efficient than books. OA touches on headings, indexes and tables of content, but Foer goes into more detail and discusses how these innovations made books a far more powerful way to store, index and retrieve knowledge. It's not exactly a deep dive but it might provide some roads into the subject.
ch33zer 7y ago
I think the author could have drawn more attention to how reading has changed recently, outside of just ebooks. Blogs, word processors, and articles are also massively changing how we consume information. Certainly still an interesting article, even if the title is a bit innacurate.
jamesrcole 7y ago
Thinking out loud, the utility of the book seems to come from it being composed of standardized, discrete units (pages). It's easier to progress through it by turning pages, and it has addressability (ability to mark pages, such as to indicate the current place you're at). And the downsides of the bookroll -- awkwardness to progress through it, having to 'rewind' them after finishing them, and lack of addressability -- comes from them being continuous. It's interesting to note that modern reading on the web is usually continuous (scrolling). It doesn't have the awkwardness of moving through the text that bookrolls did, as the computer handles that. But it does have the problem of lack of addressability.
- adrianN 7y ago
  The typical website fits on a small number of pages.
- lisper 7y ago
  Personally, I much prefer continuous scroll on my Kindle. It lets me keep the part that I'm focused on in the middle of the viewing area so I always have context above and below. Addressability has been superseded by the ability to search.
  - jamesrcole 7y ago
    > Addressability has been superseded by the ability to search. In some respects. In long-form reading on the web it can be pain to keep track of where you were up to. And searches can be awkward--but not impossible, of course--because of multiple search results for search terms.
- maccard 7y ago
  There is addressability on the web, yet creators are hell bent on removing it. the id tag lets you navigate directly to content on a web page. However, in an effort to try and find some good examples, every long form news site and magazine I checked forgoes them in favour of random class identifiers.
- franky47 7y ago
  One major difference between reading on the web though is the mutability of the support. Content can change without notice, or simply disappear (though this has parallels with physical books). I find the point of durability interesting, on how codices protected the paper better than scrolls, and had the side-effect of surviving longer and in harsher conditions. I believe the same cannot be said for digital supports: what are the chances that an EPUB file be readable (assuming file integrity and language liveliness) in the next couple of centuries ? Even if "digital monks" copy the contents of those books from one format to the next to ensure readability, at one point practicality of a paper printed version for long-term storage will prevail.
geraldbauer 7y ago
FYI: I've put together a free book format called Manuscripts. See http://manuscripts.github.io http://manuscripts.github.io and find an example bookshelf @ http://yukimotopress.github.io http://yukimotopress.github.io Happy book writing. Happy book reading.
- japanoise 7y ago
  This looks rather like an ebook written with pandoc[1]; if you don't mind, what prompted you to write your own rather than using an existing format? [1]: https://pandoc.org/epub.html https://pandoc.org/epub.html
  - geraldbauer 7y ago
    The new format is (way) easier / simpler and yes, you can use pandoc for markdown processing. If you create an online book than you can just use HTML & CSS e.g. a "standard" website or a webpage is a book. You should ask why the book industry created a new format, that is, EPUB :-). PS: That's also the direction the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) tries to go (but failed). See the upcoming https://www.w3.org/TR/wpub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/wpub/ recommendation / standard / spec trying to replace EPUB. Compare the book manifest of manuscripts with the book manifest of wpub to see what format keeps it simple. PPS: And to keep apple and oranges apart - FYI: pandoc is NOT a book format (it's a text processor), thus, you should compare Manuscripts to EPUB or the new WPUB.
- Shorel 7y ago
  It is a nice format. But until my Kindles and Kobos can read it, I would never use it to consume content.
  - geraldbauer 7y ago
    In theory (and practice) you can also (easily) create "classic" epubs or mobis from the Manuscript book source (it's just a meta datafile and structured text). One dream would be to have all Gutenberg books in Manuscripts - it's only a small step from "plain" text to structured text. I'd say way easier than to convert everything to HTML source as Standard Ebooks project is doing - https://standardebooks.org https://standardebooks.org - for example. Anyways, books in (structured) text (formats) will outlive all formats and will still work even without special ebook readers. It's a format like the alphabet (that is, it's forever). If you read it on paper or on a screen or as a codex (paged) or as scroll - it's all possible by design. Anyways, thanks for your kind words.
hrktb 7y ago
Very interesting piece. I also got caught in rabbit hole following the AAP report on ebooks sales declining. It was an interesting ride, showing a glimpse on how much things are changing and the industry is evolving. The entry of the hole, a report on trade books sales, with numbers from mainstream publishers: https://newsroom.publishers.org/trade-book-publisher-revenues-up-44-for-first-three-quarters-of-2018/ https://newsroom.publishers.org/trade-book-publisher-revenue... Then digging further it seems these publisher also had a series of actions to bring physical book prices down and promote them better to fight back the ebook trend, which would explain the number. Digging much further, independant publishing has become a thing, partly due to the rise of ebook, and independant sales is said to have sharply rised. A take on this trend: https://thenewpublishingstandard.com/ebook-sales-doubled-us-2018-according-data-guys-nonsensical-bookstat-numbers/ https://thenewpublishingstandard.com/ebook-sales-doubled-us-... Or more into the indie side: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/traditional-publishers-ebook-sales-drop-indie-authors-amazon-take-off/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/traditional-publishers-ebook-s...
- squeaky-clean 7y ago
  Anecdotally this is true for me. I used to buy kindle books frequently, now I rarely do because costs have gone up and paperbacks are often cheaper. Going through my email order history also confirms this to be true (in my case) except for programming ebooks. Prices listed for my purchases are kindle prices in USD. I can't lookup the paperback price on my day of purchase but it would be higher otherwise I wouldn't buy the ebook. May 2015 I bought The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (book 1) for 4.99. Today kindle is 7.99 and paperback is 7.99 (also the ultimate edition paperback with all 5 in the series is 13.31) May 2015 I bought The Intelligent Investor Revised for 13.99. Today kindle is 16.99 and paperback is 12.39 Jun 2015 I bought Mistborn: the Final Empire for 4.99. Today kindle is 8.99 and paperback is 8.92. Jun 2015 I bought Soul of a New Machine for 9.99. Today kindle is 9.99 and paperback is 9.79 Aug 2015 I bought Snow Crash for $7.68. Today kindle is 13.99 and paperback is 13.15 And I can keep going but I think you all get the point.
  - animal531 7y ago
    Strange, on Amazon from the 3rd world kindle books are a lot cheaper for me. The ease of finding and buying them has upped my reading significantly.

81 points by diodorus 7y ago

The article discusses the pros and cons of bookrolls and codexes (books), which is interesting, but it doesn't really discuss how books changed how people read.

m0nty 7y ago
Joshua Foer goes into this in 'Moonwalking with Einstein', approaching from the view of a would-be mnemonist and how scrolls were far less efficient than books. OA touches on headings, indexes and tables of content, but Foer goes into more detail and discusses how these innovations made books a far more powerful way to store, index and retrieve knowledge. It's not exactly a deep dive but it might provide some roads into the subject.

ch33zer 7y ago

I think the author could have drawn more attention to how reading has changed recently, outside of just ebooks. Blogs, word processors, and articles are also massively changing how we consume information. Certainly still an interesting article, even if the title is a bit innacurate.

jamesrcole 7y ago

Thinking out loud, the utility of the book seems to come from it being composed of standardized, discrete units (pages). It's easier to progress through it by turning pages, and it has addressability (ability to mark pages, such as to indicate the current place you're at). And the downsides of the bookroll -- awkwardness to progress through it, having to 'rewind' them after finishing them, and lack of addressability -- comes from them being continuous. It's interesting to note that modern reading on the web is usually continuous (scrolling). It doesn't have the awkwardness of moving through the text that bookrolls did, as the computer handles that. But it does have the problem of lack of addressability.

adrianN 7y ago
The typical website fits on a small number of pages.
lisper 7y ago
Personally, I much prefer continuous scroll on my Kindle. It lets me keep the part that I'm focused on in the middle of the viewing area so I always have context above and below. Addressability has been superseded by the ability to search.
- jamesrcole 7y ago
  > Addressability has been superseded by the ability to search. In some respects. In long-form reading on the web it can be pain to keep track of where you were up to. And searches can be awkward--but not impossible, of course--because of multiple search results for search terms.
maccard 7y ago
There is addressability on the web, yet creators are hell bent on removing it. the id tag lets you navigate directly to content on a web page. However, in an effort to try and find some good examples, every long form news site and magazine I checked forgoes them in favour of random class identifiers.
franky47 7y ago
One major difference between reading on the web though is the mutability of the support. Content can change without notice, or simply disappear (though this has parallels with physical books). I find the point of durability interesting, on how codices protected the paper better than scrolls, and had the side-effect of surviving longer and in harsher conditions. I believe the same cannot be said for digital supports: what are the chances that an EPUB file be readable (assuming file integrity and language liveliness) in the next couple of centuries ? Even if "digital monks" copy the contents of those books from one format to the next to ensure readability, at one point practicality of a paper printed version for long-term storage will prevail.

geraldbauer 7y ago

FYI: I've put together a free book format called Manuscripts. See http://manuscripts.github.io http://manuscripts.github.io and find an example bookshelf @ http://yukimotopress.github.io http://yukimotopress.github.io Happy book writing. Happy book reading.

japanoise 7y ago
This looks rather like an ebook written with pandoc[1]; if you don't mind, what prompted you to write your own rather than using an existing format? [1]: https://pandoc.org/epub.html https://pandoc.org/epub.html
- geraldbauer 7y ago
  The new format is (way) easier / simpler and yes, you can use pandoc for markdown processing. If you create an online book than you can just use HTML & CSS e.g. a "standard" website or a webpage is a book. You should ask why the book industry created a new format, that is, EPUB :-). PS: That's also the direction the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) tries to go (but failed). See the upcoming https://www.w3.org/TR/wpub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/wpub/ recommendation / standard / spec trying to replace EPUB. Compare the book manifest of manuscripts with the book manifest of wpub to see what format keeps it simple. PPS: And to keep apple and oranges apart - FYI: pandoc is NOT a book format (it's a text processor), thus, you should compare Manuscripts to EPUB or the new WPUB.
Shorel 7y ago
It is a nice format. But until my Kindles and Kobos can read it, I would never use it to consume content.
- geraldbauer 7y ago
  In theory (and practice) you can also (easily) create "classic" epubs or mobis from the Manuscript book source (it's just a meta datafile and structured text). One dream would be to have all Gutenberg books in Manuscripts - it's only a small step from "plain" text to structured text. I'd say way easier than to convert everything to HTML source as Standard Ebooks project is doing - https://standardebooks.org https://standardebooks.org - for example. Anyways, books in (structured) text (formats) will outlive all formats and will still work even without special ebook readers. It's a format like the alphabet (that is, it's forever). If you read it on paper or on a screen or as a codex (paged) or as scroll - it's all possible by design. Anyways, thanks for your kind words.

hrktb 7y ago

Very interesting piece. I also got caught in rabbit hole following the AAP report on ebooks sales declining. It was an interesting ride, showing a glimpse on how much things are changing and the industry is evolving. The entry of the hole, a report on trade books sales, with numbers from mainstream publishers: https://newsroom.publishers.org/trade-book-publisher-revenues-up-44-for-first-three-quarters-of-2018/ https://newsroom.publishers.org/trade-book-publisher-revenue... Then digging further it seems these publisher also had a series of actions to bring physical book prices down and promote them better to fight back the ebook trend, which would explain the number. Digging much further, independant publishing has become a thing, partly due to the rise of ebook, and independant sales is said to have sharply rised. A take on this trend: https://thenewpublishingstandard.com/ebook-sales-doubled-us-2018-according-data-guys-nonsensical-bookstat-numbers/ https://thenewpublishingstandard.com/ebook-sales-doubled-us-... Or more into the indie side: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/traditional-publishers-ebook-sales-drop-indie-authors-amazon-take-off/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/traditional-publishers-ebook-s...

squeaky-clean 7y ago
Anecdotally this is true for me. I used to buy kindle books frequently, now I rarely do because costs have gone up and paperbacks are often cheaper. Going through my email order history also confirms this to be true (in my case) except for programming ebooks. Prices listed for my purchases are kindle prices in USD. I can't lookup the paperback price on my day of purchase but it would be higher otherwise I wouldn't buy the ebook. May 2015 I bought The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (book 1) for 4.99. Today kindle is 7.99 and paperback is 7.99 (also the ultimate edition paperback with all 5 in the series is 13.31) May 2015 I bought The Intelligent Investor Revised for 13.99. Today kindle is 16.99 and paperback is 12.39 Jun 2015 I bought Mistborn: the Final Empire for 4.99. Today kindle is 8.99 and paperback is 8.92. Jun 2015 I bought Soul of a New Machine for 9.99. Today kindle is 9.99 and paperback is 9.79 Aug 2015 I bought Snow Crash for $7.68. Today kindle is 13.99 and paperback is 13.15 And I can keep going but I think you all get the point.
- animal531 7y ago
  Strange, on Amazon from the 3rd world kindle books are a lot cheaper for me. The ease of finding and buying them has upped my reading significantly.