I recently wrote here about how audiobook distribution models are not discovering their full potential due to how they cross the boundary between how a reader integrates with the material compared to how an audio listener integrates.

Readers read books (I know, it’s obvious, but bear with me) and I believe the acceptance of audiobooks stumbles over the need to switch modes between dealing with a physical product to dealing with discs or abstract digital files. It is the same stumbling block podcasting has had: the technology gets in the way of the user experience.

Playaway Digital have come up with a commercial distribution device that fits precisely the model I described. Pop over to my personal blog for more on how audiobook distribution may be about to change for the better.

Browse Inside this book

I just came across this while desperately trying not to start work this morning, thanks to Stumbleupon.

The complete text of Neil Gaiman’s bestselling novel American Gods is available to read online thanks to Harper Collins’ Browse Inside service. This service provides online access to a total of 500 books, enabling you to read any part of them prior to purchasing.

There is no download option, of course, simply online reading in your browser. I guess this is no different to being sat in the comfy sofa of a bookshop perusing your potential purchases as the online reading experience is going to make it a challenge to get through the entire book - but by no means impossible.

This is an interesting move for a major publisher and I’ll bet there are armies of suits in the halls of Harper Collins suffering sleepless nights over the idea of making stuff available for free on the internet. They know full well, however, that th enumer of people who will use this service for anything more than a pre-sale taster is extremely low, so it acts as a promotional piece rather than an alternative to buying.

Once again, great to see the big publishers testing the online world.

Over at Wordsushi, Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff yesterday published a passionate call to arms to understand the importance of the current new media revolution.

This is a passionate argument to the cynical couch potatoes still sat embracing the old order of traditional, mediocre, brainwashing traditional media. Mark talks about how new media is a revolution, and enabler of creativity and the bringer of freedom from corporate restraints imposed by monolithic, suit-fueled, companies. Read the post and get ready for action.

But what Mark fails to cover is what new media also brings with it is a level of flotsam that can clutter the space to such a degree that forward, valuable, genuinely creative progress becomes like wading through treacle. New media is all about giving the masses the control over content, whether that be at the creation stage or the consumer stage - we might say that this is wrenching control away from the traditional media structures. But the masses are a mob, a pack, a less than intelligent combined force that swarms around the latest fad and consuming it in a very disengaged manner before moving on to the next. The swarm is more interested in what is around the next corner than it is about exploring the depths of what it has right in front of its collective nose.

Lack of engagement brings with it a sense of the temporary, and I in the literary world, I wonder if there is not a shrinking future for the one-off, great novel. Publishers are beginning to understand the need to brand and market an author over an above the works they create, for it is the author to which the mass swarms can be enticed back. There is nothing new here, but during 2007 we saw a distinct change in the emphasis publishers were beginning to give to author brands - many prominent authors now have their own strap-lines!

The importance of the new media revolution in instigating change within the industries it touches is undeniable, but - put it down to my classic British cynicism if you wish - we are still unable to see past the surge and noise to have any idea that what is on the other side will be a positive future.