The Future

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced a new website last Friday. DigitalLiteracy.gov is dedicated to improving computer and Internet skills in America.

The new site was launched as a partnership  between 9 federal agencies who are working together to provide librarians, teachers, and others a central location to share tips, tricks, and best practices. These trusted groups can, in turn, better reach out to their communities in providing them the skills today’s employers need.

U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science, had this to say: “In Maryland and across the nation, people are hungry for good jobs and economic opportunity. Here at Coppin State University, and across America, with www.DigitalLiteracy.gov, we aren’t just talking about the innovation economy. We’re training people to be a part of it. We’re teaching how to use computer skills to get and keep a good job.”

via DigitalLiteracy.gov

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

This eBookNewser editor is now a mother. I’ll be taking some time off to adjust to my new lifestyle and get to know my new little baby.

During this break, the site will be in the capable hands of eBookNewser Contributor Nathaniel Hoffelder and GalleyCat/eBookNewser Managing Editor Jason Boog. Email them with any story ideas or releases.

I will resume my post after a couple of weeks off, but bear with me as I get the hang of motherhood and struggle to regain control of my email inbox. I’ll be looking forward to checking out all of the cool new kids’ book apps upon my return.

SXSW has revealed a partial list of its panel lineup for the interactive component of its upcoming show in March and there are a couple of digital publishing related sessions. We have listed a couple below, but follow this link to read the entire program.

1. “What Comic Books Can Teach Mobile Application Designers” organized by Anjuan Simmons, Adverlyze
Description: “The comic book medium offers many design standards that mobile application developers can use to improve the effectiveness of their graphical user interface designs. Comic books have evolved through the years to maximize their ability to tell a story while confined to two dimensional static images. Comic book legend Will Eisner published “Comics and Sequential Art” in 1985 in order to document his mastery of using graphics to tell a story. This presentation will explore the design principles Eisner shared in his landmark book and specifically apply them to mobile application design.”

2. “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted. Not!” organized by Richard Nash, Cursor
Description: “For the future of both, it is imperative that technology and culture learn from one another. Doing more with less is a philosophy that has animated both, especially in recent times with the notion of the minimum viable product, and the injunction against feature creep. But art and culture have always understood the concept of “less is more” even if it took till the 20th century of that to be coined so neatly. For art to be possible, rules are necessary. In the Assassin’s Code, the death of God makes everything possible. Many believe that the network makes everything possible. But if everything is possible, how does anything matter? In art, what is left out is as important as what is included. Can the rules of making art help us make more useful technology? Can such concepts as the minimum viable product help us do a better job of writing, editing, designing, and disseminating novels, films, music. This high interdisciplinary panel will help illuminate how the eternal verities of art and science, when properly framed, can help us be better movers of the hearts and minds of men and women…”
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The Book Futurists: Andrew Malkin, Zinio from Movable Type Literary Group on Vimeo.

GalleyCat, eBookNewser and the Movable Type Literary Group have teamed up to bring you The Book Futurists –a new video series featuring interviews with ten people from across publishing who are leading the digital revolution.

Over the next twelve weeks, we’ll introduce you to people across the digital publishing industry who are at the cutting edge digital book publishing. From design and marketing to editorial and journalism, these folks are turning the wheels of the eBook revolution.

In the first video, Jason Allen Ashlock, Principal at Movable Type Literary Group, interviews Andrew Malkin, VP of book content at Zinio. Malkin addresses Zinio’s eBook content distribution platform, the future of eBooks and the potential of hiring from outside of the publishing industry.

Will airlines begin to offer eBooks on flights the way they offer movies?

Last night I was flying on Virgin America and I was playing around on “Red,” the airline’s interactive entertainment system on the back on the seat and came across a “Read” button. When you push the button is says, “Coming soon,” which it has said since the airline launched back in 2007.

It made me wonder if they had plans to start featuring eBooks or short stories for free or for purchase. There are a number of ways that it could work. Perhaps you could sign in to an existing Amazon or Barnes & Noble account and access your digital bookshelf directly. Or perhaps the airline could sell bestsellers or short stories directly. Think Atlantic Fiction’s monthly short stories in the Kindle store.

It could also be a great place for publishers to market their books and give away sample chapters. I like to catch up on new music videos on Virgin’s entertainment system, so why not read a couple of chapters from a few new bestsellers to decide which ones I might actually like to buy and read.

It is also a good place to read newspapers, magazines or headlines. But there is something about reading books on airplanes that goes hand in hand.

What do you think?

While the Brooklyn Book Festival was much more about print than about eBooks, in a session called “The Transformation of the Book” poets and artists discussed the evolution of the book.

Poet/critic John Yau spoke about using a wiki to edit a recent book. “The idea of the book is more fluid, as it becomes a part of a mass media communication,” he said. “The book is more of a communicative gesture these days.”

For Mendi Lewis Obadike, an author/artist who works in digital media, said that a book is not about the physical object, but rather the collection of ideas that it contains. Lewis-Obadike uses the format to inform the content in her work. She explained that in one digital short story about not wanting to talk about things, the text appears and then disappears depnding on how you mouse over it.

When asked is books are dying, Lewis-Obadike said that while the economy of the print book might be dying, that books are not. Yau agreed that books are not going to die. “The book is changing, but I don’t think it is going to die,” he said. “Books exist in all different ways now.”

Poet Jen Bervin agreed. She said that the digital format can now inform that work. “The content can change. The shape of the work can change and this can inform the conversation happening about the book.”

Forrester Research has a new survey out on tablet computers and is reporting that 14% of U.S. online consumers, or 27 million people, say they intend to buy some kind of tablet in the next 12 months. The study also found the 11% of U.S. online consumers plan to buy a dedicated eReader in the next year.

Tablets and eReaders are winning out against more traditional computers. The survey found that only 4% of US online consumers say they intend to buy a desktop, 8% say they want to buy a netbook, and 13% say they want to buy a laptop. As more tablets enter the marketplace, they could become ubiquitous. The report states: “this data is encouraging for Apple’s would-be tablet competitors: There’s interest in the category that goes beyond the iPad.”

Still, there is some confusion surrounding what exactly a tablet is. The report says: “Only 10% of consumers in our June survey said that they’d heard of tablets other than the iPad. But when asked to name them in an open-ended response question, there were a lot of don’t know/can’t remember responses.”

As we near the end of a long and lazy summer, the publishing world is already plotting panel discussion ideas for next year.

Readers, writers, and publishing professionals can all help program the SXSW Interactive festival for March 2011–you can vote through the festival’s innovative SXSW Interactive PanelPicker.

We’ve listed fifteen of the publishing related panels, follow the individual links listed below to vote. Follow this link to read part one. The list follows below…

Kill The Publisher: Independent eBooks Liberate Content Creators, suggested by David Schloss, Mac Create, Inc.
“Since the time of Guttenberg’s press, the power–and the money–has gone to those who publish books, not to the creatives themselves. As the big book publishers grapple with the shift from analog to digital distribution they have cried that ‘the book is dead.’ The book is very much alive, it’s the bloated, bottom-feeding print publishers that are dying. This session will show you you can take well-crafted, targeted content and make it available on the Apple iBookstore and Kindle marketplace to reach readers that publishers couldn’t reach at speeds they can’t imagine.”

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SXSW Interactive is already gearing up for March 2011 and now is your chance to vote on the content at the show through the SXSW Interactive PanelPicker. Follow this link to see Part Two.

Ebooks and digital publishing are a hot topic this year. Here is a list of 15 of the 30 topics to chose from. Vote for your favorite here.

1. “Why Authors Should Think Like Indie Bands” suggested by Gavin St. Ours, The Gavin Show
Description: “The publishing world is wrought with uncertainty. On this panel, hear from literary agents and authors describe the way the industry is changing and why it doesn’t mean doom-and-gloom for unknown fiction writers. They’ll share success stories, practical advice, and opinions on the future of publishing.”

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By 2015, 29.4 million US consumers will own eReaders. This is according to a new report from Forrester Research called, “How eReaders Will Fare In A Tablet PC World,” by analyst James L. McQuivey.

According to the report, eReaders are facing challenges with the rise of tablet PCs. From the report: “iPad is already desired by more people than any single eReader, something we expect to only increase with time. However, with just 3.7 million eReaders in the US market at the end of 2009, there is plenty of room for eReaders to grab the attention of the one-fifth of the US online population that reads at least two books per month.”

As tablets gain steam, expect lower prices on traditional eReaders. More from the report: “We recommend that strategists planning the next wave of eReaders diversify the portfolio of eReading devices to secure their ownership of the reading experience, offering devices that range from stripped-down $49 pocket readers to full-color touch readers that erase the gap between today’s eReaders and tablet PCs.”