10 ms·

Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

126 points by kawera 7y ago

leggomylibro 7y ago
These look very cool! They clearly put a lot of thought into the design, and it's always nice to see these sorts of novel efforts to encourage reading.
thrower123 7y ago
I'm intrigued, and yet horrified by the amount of bandwidth that all of these images must be consuming.
- shhshahassa 7y ago
  Here is the required negative hacker news comment. Thanks for stepping up!
- icebraining 7y ago
  Don't worry; just think that in the time spent reading a single page/picture, the user is not watch another shaky (ie, hard to compress) HD video, which are common on IG.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  You're not going to believe this but sometimes I stream video and go to sleep before it's finished. It's 4k too. I don't even give a fuck. An hour of wasted bandwidth, not even half a shit given.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  The CDN has already cached it for the company and the users are probably on wifi so why think about it Even if it was cellular...
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Well, there's taste, and I agree with GP here - I too find such things distasteful. It's not much waste in the grand scheme of things, but it's still ridiculously wasteful, and the more wastefulness is accepted, the more it adds up everywhere.
- feintruled 7y ago
  I know for some backbone comms technologies (SDH, maybe?) there has to be some sort of carrier signal at all times. I think this is probably true for fibre as well, it's never truly dark. So maybe the bandwidth being there should be used for something useful? (I purposely ignore the processing power required at the other end to serve you the images ;-)
mileycyrusXOXO 7y ago
Here's [1] NYPL's website for the project. The site details out the motivation behind the project, provides a list of novels released and to come. It is also loaded with eye candy from the gorgeous animation and design examples. Not to turn the subject to IP but I think this is a wonderful example of what can be done with the public domain: >Each book so far in the Insta Novels Collection has come from the public domain. https://www.instanovels.work/ https://www.instanovels.work/
- ja27 7y ago
  It wouldn't be hard to push these to Snapchat too and maybe get kids to read [and get off my lawn].
recori 7y ago
Really excited about these kind of steps taken towards multimedia literature and digitalization of it. For quite some time, school textbooks and literature has been brought to touch screen devices or otherwise digitalized on other devices as-is - pages with text as we have known it for long time. Modern tech could enable much more deeper and interactable content for both studies and leisure reading.
- greggman2 7y ago
  and yet in my experience most HNers and similar tech communities want all docs in plain text, tex, or very simple markdown suggest that Wikipedia would be better if it's physics articles had interactive simulations or that stack overflow's failed docs initiative should make room for working examples and get downvoted into oblivion
  - tomashubelbauer 7y ago
    We've seen some interactive education projects on HN (the famous page on raytracing, the one where there's everything about curves, many audio-based projects) and they have had great reception. I think the reason why most devs still prefer plain-text resources over anything else is two-fold: interactive stuff tends to be less standard (because there isn't really a good standard for it) and harder to version than text, but also for interactive education/documentation tools to be accepted, they need to meet a certain high bar of quality, otherwise they are just eye-candy with insufficient value-add. When developing such tools, I believe there is a point of immersion after which they clearly become superior to text materials to most people including otherwise text-heavy devs, but if an author of such interactive tool fails to reach this level, their work is seen as a distraction, because you still need to refer elsewhere. Stack Overflow's documentation examples (as much as I really wished the initiative would succeed) were very far from reaching this bar. They were not organized well, lackluster and were not interactive enough either.
    - maxheadroom 7y ago
      >I think the reason why most devs still prefer plain-text resources over anything else is... I think you missed a vital reason and that is portability and sharability. No one needs to install anything special to read or edit a text file. It's the digital equivalent of paper and pen when you think about it and that makes it a popular platform for everyone to be able to consume it. Plus, back when we were all old and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the text file was the lightest/smallest way to transfer data (read: ideas) between computers. The practice/behaviour saturated the industry so much that many readmes of today are still on text files. Maybe there's a correlation to the real world, where we're definitely more apt to consume mediums that don't have superfluous data points than the words/ideas that they're meant to convey? Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass? Either way, plain-text resources are the easiest to create, share, and consume because there's almost a universality in the standard for text files (except the EOL and CRLF but that's more of an inconvenience than anything).
phillipamann 7y ago
It is likely that if you did an experiment that compared retention and understanding of reading with the real books and these Instagram Stories, the readers of real books would trounce the Instagram readers. I suppose that something is better than nothing but at a certain point, I also wonder, what is the point of doing this? I wonder how many Instagram readers will drop their habits and read more? I also wonder how many of these readers will finish the books? I didn't see that information presented in the article.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  If people have a compelling experience who cares? I think its useful as a thought exercise and idea for profiles but nothing more. Its not useful for NYPL to increase its physical engagement, and thats fine. Kinda a fun reason to use instagram though, see what a profile is up to. Sidenote: I’ve inadvertently joined book clubs just because a meme account started shilling a book and then started posting memes about the book
- CathedralBorrow 7y ago
  > I also wonder, what is the point of doing this? This is answered in the article: "The project, known as Insta Novels, is part of the NYPL’s goal to reach beyond its walls and convince more people to read books."
- interestica 7y ago
  > it is likely There's no basis in that assumption. In fact, I'd argue that it's possible that this format (interspersed with graphics and with a user base tuned to ingest content in a certain way) may actually aid retention and understanding. Instagram users have gotten very good at quickly gleaning information from the format. There's a huge userbase and they are not likely carrying around a physical book or eReader. This book format is essentially on them at all times and takes advantage of the potential to "hook" a user at an opportune moment. Instagram users aren't expected to "drop their habits". Their habit is one of consumption - this just fits into that habit.
- damontal 7y ago
  Anecdotal but I find I retain a audiobooks I've listened to far more than actual physical books I've read.
DJHenk 7y ago
Wow, talking about putting the horse behind the carriage. So, people don't have the concentration to read a book anymore. But instead of fixing the cause of this, whatever it is, we mangle them through platforms that weren't designed for it and if there is some success, we claim that people are reading again. Of course they are not. It's a whole different experience. It can be nice and it can add to the experiences that we already knew, but it is definitely not the same as reading a book. It is more like seeing the movie adaptation of the book. Books have remained the same for centuries. If people are suddenly unable to read them anymore, it is far more likely that it is the people that need "fixing", and not the books.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  > it can add to the experiences that we already knew, but it is definitely not the same as reading a book. It is more like seeing the movie adaptation of the book. In full text, in text only form, verbatim Explain the distinction you are making again and why do you feel it is a productive distinction to make?
  - silveroriole 7y ago
    The article says there are animations which “bring the story to life”. Normal adult readers don’t need pictures and animations to aid engagement/understanding - people who are more used to watching movies or reading series of tweets/reaction gifs might.
    - mintplant 7y ago
      They're little UI accents and not the main focus.
    - LandR 7y ago
      I'm reading a book right now, as an adult, that has illustrations in it. What harm? It's a little extra fun that the words are wrapped in some lovely illustrations by a well respected illustrator. It's not detracting from the novel in the least.
  - 7y ago
_august 7y ago
Try it yourself, it’s pretty cool like an instant ebook. Metamorphosis: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODUyMTE0ODA2MzA3Njgy?igshid=1s219emfk4x6l&story_media_id=1927598101380494085 https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODUyMTE0ODA2MzA3... The Raven: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTYyMTk5MTcwMTYzNDYy?igshid=pwpd1dm8qi10&story_media_id=1902019574360286528 https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTYyMTk5MTcwMTYz... Alice In Wonderland: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTQ0MTEwMzE5MTg4NDkx?igshid=a9zsopdzuodn&story_media_id=1851468855614171599 https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTQ0MTEwMzE5MTg4... — I find the top comment quite cynical, it’s literally the same as reading text on an ebook or even paperback. IMO once you get engrossed in a story the medium falls away. It’s cool that people are experimenting with a platform in a way maybe not originally intended, but that’s the beauty of it. No one can really foresee all the things you can do with a new platform/technology.
- hos234 7y ago
  They have broken the internet by banning hyperlinks. So naturally everything starts happening inside the app. How would you do copy a quote, table of contents or term lookups? I can't even check out the links u posted cause it asks me to login.
  - jimws 7y ago
    While I agree that this is strictly worse than current document and eBook formats meant for computers, this inarguably not much worse than physical books. We couldn't have copied quotes or table of contents in a physical book.
    - hos234 7y ago
      I get the users are just looking for ways of doing thing they like. Many won't know what features are available elsewhere. Sooner or later they will start grumbling about it. And then expect Zuck and his henchmen, to come up with retarded round about ways to provide the features. "We pay close attention to our cattle. Our new AI based cloud OCR can identify upto 40% of all words on a single page! You can even copy and paste some of them etc etc". I personally don't like reading books on the Kindle or Phone but do find the bookmarking/lookup/navigation features very useful and of course the ability to store a zillion books. Given all those advantages expect some Facebook exec to start drawing up master plans.
gitgud 7y ago
This also reminds me of this company [1] wavve, which I first noticed on Indie Hackers. They basically convert podcasts to videos for social media and generate huge (Stripe-verified) profits from providing the service. This just shows the enormity of the Instagram user-base. A tiny fraction of niche users on Instagram can add up to a massive market... [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/product/wavve https://www.indiehackers.com/product/wavve
ga-vu 7y ago
So if you miss a story, you miss a page. :))) This is actually... kinda useless.
- jaifraic 7y ago
  For 300.000 people it is... kinda useful. And the books are shared via the highlight function of Instagram. It's like stories, but they aren't deleted after 24h. They stay in your profile and can be watched again and again until you delete them.
foobarbecue 7y ago
Another example of how technologically inferior platforms can be successful given the right exposure. (this is obviously inferior because the user cannot reflow the text, change font color, copy paste, highlight, etc.)
- danielnixon 7y ago
  Nor in some cases even read at all https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-contrast-text-presentation.html https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-cont...
jasode 7y ago
Since a few comments mention the superiority of "real books", maybe those with that opinion see Instagram as downgrading the reading experience. For some perspective, keep in mind that many famous novels were originally magazine or newspaper installments.[0] Therefore, reading works like Dumas' "Count of Monte Cristo", Dostoevsky's "Crime & Punishment", or Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" -- in consolidated book form -- is the incorrect method of reading their words. And the correct way to read Charles Dickens is in partial installments to stop at the cliffhanger and then wait a month to resume the story. Or maybe, the Instagram'ing of novels can be seen as harmless re-serializing of books. An aside about what "reading" really is... Some think that listening to the words of a book (e.g. Audible) instead of seeing the words with eyeballs is also not really reading. Does this also mean that blind people are never really "reading" unless their fingers are touching braille? But the reverse can be true. We're consuming "The Iliad" incorrectly if reading it as a book since it was originally orally transmitted instead of written down. For some, the physical medium defines what reading is. I don't agree with that but it's clear some really have rigid opinions about how the authors' words are supposed to enter our brains. EDIT ADD: similar bite-sized reading behavior on smartphones in China explained by a16z Connie Chan. It's not too different from Charles Dickens serializations in the 19th century. Deeplink about China's mobile book economy at 6m25s: https://youtu.be/78pLIj4xeVs?t=6m25s https://youtu.be/78pLIj4xeVs?t=6m25s [0] https://booksonthewall.com/blog/serial-novel-a-brief-history/ https://booksonthewall.com/blog/serial-novel-a-brief-history...
- saalweachter 7y ago
  You will find a certain argument that you are "reading" all poetry wrong, if you are not reading it aloud.
  - jasode 7y ago
    Likewise, "The Iliad" with its repetitions of text that look tedious in written form is really a long poem that's meant to be performed and heard. The oral repetitions are a memory aid for the audience listening to the story. Some historians say the itinerant wanderer would also have a lute to pluck some music accompaniment to add drama to key parts of the poem.
5ep 7y ago
I like this project a lot but I question the claim in the headline, that hundreds of thousands of people are reading these novels through NYPL's Instagram stories. More likely is that the quoted number refers to how many views the stories have received, combined, and then mainly the first pages of each individual story. The stories have hundreds of pages and there's no way to pick up where you left, so I do not believe people open them more than once. I'm guessing that none of the 300,000 viewers have actually read any of the books until completion , through these stories.
meshenna 7y ago
A part of me is appalled, but another is amused and intrigued. "The street finds its own uses for things," I guess.
mikece 7y ago
Isn’t this exactly what Steve Jobs hoped would happen when iBooks was introduced? That a new, multimedia format where books “come to life with animations and video” would be born... granted he hoped such creators would do this for the ipad’s ebooks and not Insta-Face-App.
jordanpg 7y ago
Am I the only one that's skeptical of the claim that "300,000 people are reading books this way"? That there are 300k people who are now suddenly "reading" books that have been available in a huge variety of formats in the public domain for years because they show up on Instagram? Show me the actual usage data. How many of these 300k got past page 3? The design is nice, the presentation is good, yes, but I doubt very seriously the existence of this hidden, neglected population of bibliophiles.
- jasode 7y ago
  >now suddenly "reading" books that have been available in a huge variety of formats in the public domain for years because they show up on Instagram? I can't speak to the 300k number but an increase in readership is plausible because I saw how reducing friction to consume a book can massively change reading habits. E.g. my friend with the new Kindle finally got around to reading the classics like "Madame Bovary" and "Anna Karenina" because she could get ebooks from Amazon for $0.00 (or sometimes a tiny amount like 95 cents). The previous existence of those public domain books on Gutenberg Project's website was irrelevant since the HTML or TXT files weren't easy to consume unless one printed them out on a printer. Yes, public domain books have always been sold on Amazon as real paper books but the shipping would end up being $3.99 even for a book costing $0.00. The Kindle e-reader was the technology to enable her to read public domain books for free with minimum friction. (Even a trip to the public library to check out and later return a physical book for "free" is too much of a hassle.) I can see how this NYPL project is trying to make a friction-free book reading experience for Instagram users who already own their smartphones. No Kindle purchase necessary. (In my other comment, I mention how millions of Chinese people are reading books on their smartphones.)
  - jordanpg 7y ago
    I hear you, but I remain skeptical about any sort of significant uptick in adoption of, not of e-reading in general, but of these particular books. You mention a friend who read chose to read "Madame Bovary" and "Anna Karenina" upon discovering a cheap and convenient e-book format. Those books are classics in the Western Canon, yes, but they are also slogs, by some measures. The other thing that happened, and continues to happen in parallel with the explosion of e-reading tech, is an explosion of other things to (copyrighted) read, written in the modern colloquial, (perhaps more) relevant to modern times. The rise of the tepid, self-published novel on Amazon is the best example of this. I can believe that there is a latent desire out there for more good books to read or a cool new tech to use to read them, but I doubt very much that very old books in the public domain sate that thirst in any significant way. I think your friend is in the minority.
nealrs 7y ago
If you'd like to do something similar, but for your blog (or any website really) -- I wrote an app that produces segmented videos in both Instagram Story / square aspect ratios. It's called StoryScroll => https://neal.rs/app https://neal.rs/app Here's a demo video => https://youtu.be/u1k1JZtDzuU https://youtu.be/u1k1JZtDzuU
ereyes01 7y ago
Ever since I read the A Song of Ice and Fire books on my phone from plain text files I acquired (don't ask me how) on a reader app, paper books feel like a much more inferior experience. On my phone, I can control the text size, the font, can control the screen brightness, have a night mode option, and can read in the dark. Furthermore, my phone is always with me, so I don't need to carry around an additional device or a book.
bradezone 7y ago
There's no way 300000 people are actually reading entire books this way. Probably not even 3000. They're just clicking/swiping to get thru their entire stories feed, and these just happen to be in the mix.

126 points by kawera 7y ago

These look very cool! They clearly put a lot of thought into the design, and it's always nice to see these sorts of novel efforts to encourage reading.

thrower123 7y ago

I'm intrigued, and yet horrified by the amount of bandwidth that all of these images must be consuming.

shhshahassa 7y ago
Here is the required negative hacker news comment. Thanks for stepping up!
icebraining 7y ago
Don't worry; just think that in the time spent reading a single page/picture, the user is not watch another shaky (ie, hard to compress) HD video, which are common on IG.
scarejunba 7y ago
You're not going to believe this but sometimes I stream video and go to sleep before it's finished. It's 4k too. I don't even give a fuck. An hour of wasted bandwidth, not even half a shit given.
rolltiide 7y ago
The CDN has already cached it for the company and the users are probably on wifi so why think about it Even if it was cellular...
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Well, there's taste, and I agree with GP here - I too find such things distasteful. It's not much waste in the grand scheme of things, but it's still ridiculously wasteful, and the more wastefulness is accepted, the more it adds up everywhere.
feintruled 7y ago
I know for some backbone comms technologies (SDH, maybe?) there has to be some sort of carrier signal at all times. I think this is probably true for fibre as well, it's never truly dark. So maybe the bandwidth being there should be used for something useful? (I purposely ignore the processing power required at the other end to serve you the images ;-)

mileycyrusXOXO 7y ago

Here's [1] NYPL's website for the project. The site details out the motivation behind the project, provides a list of novels released and to come. It is also loaded with eye candy from the gorgeous animation and design examples. Not to turn the subject to IP but I think this is a wonderful example of what can be done with the public domain: >Each book so far in the Insta Novels Collection has come from the public domain. https://www.instanovels.work/ https://www.instanovels.work/

ja27 7y ago
It wouldn't be hard to push these to Snapchat too and maybe get kids to read [and get off my lawn].

recori 7y ago

Really excited about these kind of steps taken towards multimedia literature and digitalization of it. For quite some time, school textbooks and literature has been brought to touch screen devices or otherwise digitalized on other devices as-is - pages with text as we have known it for long time. Modern tech could enable much more deeper and interactable content for both studies and leisure reading.

greggman2 7y ago
and yet in my experience most HNers and similar tech communities want all docs in plain text, tex, or very simple markdown suggest that Wikipedia would be better if it's physics articles had interactive simulations or that stack overflow's failed docs initiative should make room for working examples and get downvoted into oblivion
- tomashubelbauer 7y ago
  We've seen some interactive education projects on HN (the famous page on raytracing, the one where there's everything about curves, many audio-based projects) and they have had great reception. I think the reason why most devs still prefer plain-text resources over anything else is two-fold: interactive stuff tends to be less standard (because there isn't really a good standard for it) and harder to version than text, but also for interactive education/documentation tools to be accepted, they need to meet a certain high bar of quality, otherwise they are just eye-candy with insufficient value-add. When developing such tools, I believe there is a point of immersion after which they clearly become superior to text materials to most people including otherwise text-heavy devs, but if an author of such interactive tool fails to reach this level, their work is seen as a distraction, because you still need to refer elsewhere. Stack Overflow's documentation examples (as much as I really wished the initiative would succeed) were very far from reaching this bar. They were not organized well, lackluster and were not interactive enough either.
  - maxheadroom 7y ago
    >I think the reason why most devs still prefer plain-text resources over anything else is... I think you missed a vital reason and that is portability and sharability. No one needs to install anything special to read or edit a text file. It's the digital equivalent of paper and pen when you think about it and that makes it a popular platform for everyone to be able to consume it. Plus, back when we were all old and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the text file was the lightest/smallest way to transfer data (read: ideas) between computers. The practice/behaviour saturated the industry so much that many readmes of today are still on text files. Maybe there's a correlation to the real world, where we're definitely more apt to consume mediums that don't have superfluous data points than the words/ideas that they're meant to convey? Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass? Either way, plain-text resources are the easiest to create, share, and consume because there's almost a universality in the standard for text files (except the EOL and CRLF but that's more of an inconvenience than anything).

phillipamann 7y ago

It is likely that if you did an experiment that compared retention and understanding of reading with the real books and these Instagram Stories, the readers of real books would trounce the Instagram readers. I suppose that something is better than nothing but at a certain point, I also wonder, what is the point of doing this? I wonder how many Instagram readers will drop their habits and read more? I also wonder how many of these readers will finish the books? I didn't see that information presented in the article.

rolltiide 7y ago
If people have a compelling experience who cares? I think its useful as a thought exercise and idea for profiles but nothing more. Its not useful for NYPL to increase its physical engagement, and thats fine. Kinda a fun reason to use instagram though, see what a profile is up to. Sidenote: I’ve inadvertently joined book clubs just because a meme account started shilling a book and then started posting memes about the book
CathedralBorrow 7y ago
> I also wonder, what is the point of doing this? This is answered in the article: "The project, known as Insta Novels, is part of the NYPL’s goal to reach beyond its walls and convince more people to read books."
interestica 7y ago
> it is likely There's no basis in that assumption. In fact, I'd argue that it's possible that this format (interspersed with graphics and with a user base tuned to ingest content in a certain way) may actually aid retention and understanding. Instagram users have gotten very good at quickly gleaning information from the format. There's a huge userbase and they are not likely carrying around a physical book or eReader. This book format is essentially on them at all times and takes advantage of the potential to "hook" a user at an opportune moment. Instagram users aren't expected to "drop their habits". Their habit is one of consumption - this just fits into that habit.
damontal 7y ago
Anecdotal but I find I retain a audiobooks I've listened to far more than actual physical books I've read.

DJHenk 7y ago

Wow, talking about putting the horse behind the carriage. So, people don't have the concentration to read a book anymore. But instead of fixing the cause of this, whatever it is, we mangle them through platforms that weren't designed for it and if there is some success, we claim that people are reading again. Of course they are not. It's a whole different experience. It can be nice and it can add to the experiences that we already knew, but it is definitely not the same as reading a book. It is more like seeing the movie adaptation of the book. Books have remained the same for centuries. If people are suddenly unable to read them anymore, it is far more likely that it is the people that need "fixing", and not the books.

rolltiide 7y ago
> it can add to the experiences that we already knew, but it is definitely not the same as reading a book. It is more like seeing the movie adaptation of the book. In full text, in text only form, verbatim Explain the distinction you are making again and why do you feel it is a productive distinction to make?
- silveroriole 7y ago
  The article says there are animations which “bring the story to life”. Normal adult readers don’t need pictures and animations to aid engagement/understanding - people who are more used to watching movies or reading series of tweets/reaction gifs might.
  - mintplant 7y ago
    They're little UI accents and not the main focus.
  - LandR 7y ago
    I'm reading a book right now, as an adult, that has illustrations in it. What harm? It's a little extra fun that the words are wrapped in some lovely illustrations by a well respected illustrator. It's not detracting from the novel in the least.
- 7y ago

_august 7y ago

Try it yourself, it’s pretty cool like an instant ebook. Metamorphosis: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODUyMTE0ODA2MzA3Njgy?igshid=1s219emfk4x6l&story_media_id=1927598101380494085 https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODUyMTE0ODA2MzA3... The Raven: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTYyMTk5MTcwMTYzNDYy?igshid=pwpd1dm8qi10&story_media_id=1902019574360286528 https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTYyMTk5MTcwMTYz... Alice In Wonderland: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTQ0MTEwMzE5MTg4NDkx?igshid=a9zsopdzuodn&story_media_id=1851468855614171599 https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTQ0MTEwMzE5MTg4... — I find the top comment quite cynical, it’s literally the same as reading text on an ebook or even paperback. IMO once you get engrossed in a story the medium falls away. It’s cool that people are experimenting with a platform in a way maybe not originally intended, but that’s the beauty of it. No one can really foresee all the things you can do with a new platform/technology.

hos234 7y ago
They have broken the internet by banning hyperlinks. So naturally everything starts happening inside the app. How would you do copy a quote, table of contents or term lookups? I can't even check out the links u posted cause it asks me to login.
- jimws 7y ago
  While I agree that this is strictly worse than current document and eBook formats meant for computers, this inarguably not much worse than physical books. We couldn't have copied quotes or table of contents in a physical book.
  - hos234 7y ago
    I get the users are just looking for ways of doing thing they like. Many won't know what features are available elsewhere. Sooner or later they will start grumbling about it. And then expect Zuck and his henchmen, to come up with retarded round about ways to provide the features. "We pay close attention to our cattle. Our new AI based cloud OCR can identify upto 40% of all words on a single page! You can even copy and paste some of them etc etc". I personally don't like reading books on the Kindle or Phone but do find the bookmarking/lookup/navigation features very useful and of course the ability to store a zillion books. Given all those advantages expect some Facebook exec to start drawing up master plans.

gitgud 7y ago

This also reminds me of this company [1] wavve, which I first noticed on Indie Hackers. They basically convert podcasts to videos for social media and generate huge (Stripe-verified) profits from providing the service. This just shows the enormity of the Instagram user-base. A tiny fraction of niche users on Instagram can add up to a massive market... [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/product/wavve https://www.indiehackers.com/product/wavve

ga-vu 7y ago

So if you miss a story, you miss a page. :))) This is actually... kinda useless.

jaifraic 7y ago
For 300.000 people it is... kinda useful. And the books are shared via the highlight function of Instagram. It's like stories, but they aren't deleted after 24h. They stay in your profile and can be watched again and again until you delete them.

foobarbecue 7y ago

Another example of how technologically inferior platforms can be successful given the right exposure. (this is obviously inferior because the user cannot reflow the text, change font color, copy paste, highlight, etc.)

danielnixon 7y ago
Nor in some cases even read at all https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-contrast-text-presentation.html https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-cont...

jasode 7y ago

Since a few comments mention the superiority of "real books", maybe those with that opinion see Instagram as downgrading the reading experience. For some perspective, keep in mind that many famous novels were originally magazine or newspaper installments.[0] Therefore, reading works like Dumas' "Count of Monte Cristo", Dostoevsky's "Crime & Punishment", or Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" -- in consolidated book form -- is the incorrect method of reading their words. And the correct way to read Charles Dickens is in partial installments to stop at the cliffhanger and then wait a month to resume the story. Or maybe, the Instagram'ing of novels can be seen as harmless re-serializing of books. An aside about what "reading" really is... Some think that listening to the words of a book (e.g. Audible) instead of seeing the words with eyeballs is also not really reading. Does this also mean that blind people are never really "reading" unless their fingers are touching braille? But the reverse can be true. We're consuming "The Iliad" incorrectly if reading it as a book since it was originally orally transmitted instead of written down. For some, the physical medium defines what reading is. I don't agree with that but it's clear some really have rigid opinions about how the authors' words are supposed to enter our brains. EDIT ADD: similar bite-sized reading behavior on smartphones in China explained by a16z Connie Chan. It's not too different from Charles Dickens serializations in the 19th century. Deeplink about China's mobile book economy at 6m25s: https://youtu.be/78pLIj4xeVs?t=6m25s https://youtu.be/78pLIj4xeVs?t=6m25s [0] https://booksonthewall.com/blog/serial-novel-a-brief-history/ https://booksonthewall.com/blog/serial-novel-a-brief-history...

saalweachter 7y ago
You will find a certain argument that you are "reading" all poetry wrong, if you are not reading it aloud.
- jasode 7y ago
  Likewise, "The Iliad" with its repetitions of text that look tedious in written form is really a long poem that's meant to be performed and heard. The oral repetitions are a memory aid for the audience listening to the story. Some historians say the itinerant wanderer would also have a lute to pluck some music accompaniment to add drama to key parts of the poem.

5ep 7y ago

I like this project a lot but I question the claim in the headline, that hundreds of thousands of people are reading these novels through NYPL's Instagram stories. More likely is that the quoted number refers to how many views the stories have received, combined, and then mainly the first pages of each individual story. The stories have hundreds of pages and there's no way to pick up where you left, so I do not believe people open them more than once. I'm guessing that none of the 300,000 viewers have actually read any of the books until completion , through these stories.

meshenna 7y ago

A part of me is appalled, but another is amused and intrigued. "The street finds its own uses for things," I guess.

mikece 7y ago

Isn’t this exactly what Steve Jobs hoped would happen when iBooks was introduced? That a new, multimedia format where books “come to life with animations and video” would be born... granted he hoped such creators would do this for the ipad’s ebooks and not Insta-Face-App.

jordanpg 7y ago

Am I the only one that's skeptical of the claim that "300,000 people are reading books this way"? That there are 300k people who are now suddenly "reading" books that have been available in a huge variety of formats in the public domain for years because they show up on Instagram? Show me the actual usage data. How many of these 300k got past page 3? The design is nice, the presentation is good, yes, but I doubt very seriously the existence of this hidden, neglected population of bibliophiles.

jasode 7y ago
>now suddenly "reading" books that have been available in a huge variety of formats in the public domain for years because they show up on Instagram? I can't speak to the 300k number but an increase in readership is plausible because I saw how reducing friction to consume a book can massively change reading habits. E.g. my friend with the new Kindle finally got around to reading the classics like "Madame Bovary" and "Anna Karenina" because she could get ebooks from Amazon for $0.00 (or sometimes a tiny amount like 95 cents). The previous existence of those public domain books on Gutenberg Project's website was irrelevant since the HTML or TXT files weren't easy to consume unless one printed them out on a printer. Yes, public domain books have always been sold on Amazon as real paper books but the shipping would end up being $3.99 even for a book costing $0.00. The Kindle e-reader was the technology to enable her to read public domain books for free with minimum friction. (Even a trip to the public library to check out and later return a physical book for "free" is too much of a hassle.) I can see how this NYPL project is trying to make a friction-free book reading experience for Instagram users who already own their smartphones. No Kindle purchase necessary. (In my other comment, I mention how millions of Chinese people are reading books on their smartphones.)
- jordanpg 7y ago
  I hear you, but I remain skeptical about any sort of significant uptick in adoption of, not of e-reading in general, but of these particular books. You mention a friend who read chose to read "Madame Bovary" and "Anna Karenina" upon discovering a cheap and convenient e-book format. Those books are classics in the Western Canon, yes, but they are also slogs, by some measures. The other thing that happened, and continues to happen in parallel with the explosion of e-reading tech, is an explosion of other things to (copyrighted) read, written in the modern colloquial, (perhaps more) relevant to modern times. The rise of the tepid, self-published novel on Amazon is the best example of this. I can believe that there is a latent desire out there for more good books to read or a cool new tech to use to read them, but I doubt very much that very old books in the public domain sate that thirst in any significant way. I think your friend is in the minority.

nealrs 7y ago

If you'd like to do something similar, but for your blog (or any website really) -- I wrote an app that produces segmented videos in both Instagram Story / square aspect ratios. It's called StoryScroll => https://neal.rs/app https://neal.rs/app Here's a demo video => https://youtu.be/u1k1JZtDzuU https://youtu.be/u1k1JZtDzuU

ereyes01 7y ago

Ever since I read the A Song of Ice and Fire books on my phone from plain text files I acquired (don't ask me how) on a reader app, paper books feel like a much more inferior experience. On my phone, I can control the text size, the font, can control the screen brightness, have a night mode option, and can read in the dark. Furthermore, my phone is always with me, so I don't need to carry around an additional device or a book.

bradezone 7y ago

There's no way 300000 people are actually reading entire books this way. Probably not even 3000. They're just clicking/swiping to get thru their entire stories feed, and these just happen to be in the mix.