Burning the Page: The Ebook Revolution and the Future of Reading
Author(s): Jason Merkoski (Author)
Publisher: Sourcebooks Inc
Publication Date: August 6, 2013
Language: English
Print length: 233 pages
ISBN-10: 1402288832
ISBN-13: 9781402288838
Book Description
A groundbreaking vision on the future of reading, from an early innovator on Amazon’s Kindle team.
Is digital the death knell for print?
Or will it reinvigorate the written word?
What will happen to bookstores, book browsing, libraries, even autographs?
Will they die outor evolve into something new?
In Burning the Page, digital pioneer Jason Merkoski charts the ebook revolution’s striking impact on the ways in which we create, discover, and share ideas. From the sleek halls of Silicon Valley to the jungles of Southeast Asia, Merkoski explores how ebooks came to be and predicts innovative and interactive ways digital content will shape our lives. Throughout, you are invited to continue the conversation online and help shape this exciting new world of “Reading 2.0.”
For those who love books, collect books, own an e-reader, vow never to own one, or simply want to know where books are headed, this is a crucial guide to both the future of reading and to our digital culture as a whole.
In this collection of 22 essays, Merkoski, former senior Kindle program manager at Amazon, shares his version of the history of e-books and his thoughts on the future of reading. Each section concludes with a “Bookmark,” a short piece that takes a look at a particular aspect of the print world (such as covers, indexing, bookstores, and browsing) and how it has evolved in the world of e-books. These pieces each feature a distinct URL directing the user to Facebook or Twitter to continue the “conversation,” offering bonus essays and more. More of a personal narrative than a history or a manifesto, this offering won’t supply readers with salacious details about the inner workings and trade secrets of Amazon. Librarians will enjoy his waxing poetic about how lovely books are and how valuable reading is to our culture, but they will likely be disappointed in the fact that the brief essay “Libraries” spends more time talking about print books than it does e-books. That aside, there’s no question that e-books are certainly a hot topic and readers will be interested to know what an industry insider has to say about them. –Rebecca Vnuk
About the Author
Jason Merkoski was a development manager, product manager, and the first technology evangelist at Amazon. He helped to invent technology used in today’s eBooks and was a member of the launch team for each of the first three Kindle devices. Trained in theoretical math at MIT, he worked for almost two decades in telecommunications and e-commerce with America’s biggest online retailers, and he’s worked with publishers large and small to shape the future of eBooks. As a digital pioneer, he wrote and published the first online eBook in the 1990s. As a futurist, he’s equally at home in Seattle or Silicon Valley, although he’s drawn to the high desert of New Mexico, where he can string up his hammock and stare into the clouds and ancient petroglyphs.
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