Reading a book is one of the most solitary activities I can think of. You can read a book to someone, but you can’t really read a book with someone — someone always reads faster, or finds a different spot to linger on. (Magazines are a different, um, story… especially celebrity mags that pride themselves on having big pictures and small words.)
Technology, of course, is in the process of changing how that works, and has allowed us to build new social interactions around this very solitary activity. While I’m still embarrassingly behind in many e-book respects (I don’t have a Kindle or other digital book reader, though I will say that I bought a copy of the William Gibson Sprawl Trilogy on 3.5″ floppy disc way back in the day), here are some thoughts from a casual reader on how social media has changed and is changing how we read books:
* Reviews and recommendations: I remember an early protoblog in the 90s, from a guy who posted a personal Web page featuring a running list of the books he’d read. (Typical reaction at the time: “Do you really think anyone cares what you’re reading?”)
Fast-forward to now, when people trust reader reviews more than professional critics, and collaborative filtering (i.e. if I like books A, B, and C, and you like books A & B, you’ll probably also like C) is no longer a stand-alone technology, but is baked into everything.
* Discussions and book groups: Book groups are probably as old as books — after all, if you’ve put all the time and effort into reading something, why not show off a bit about it? Real-world book groups have varying degrees of success (at least, in terms of actual book discussion), while the ability to transcend geography to form groups based on shared interest in the subject matter can lead to better-focused discussions.
Perhaps future e-book readers will be able to link together all the folks who are currently reading the same book, for discussion purposes.
* Shared annotations: Another potential use of community in the shared book experience is the ability to see and share annotations on the fly, which could range from the micro (tagging) to the macro (in-line discussions of particular passages.) You can see a similar behavior in movie buffs who record their own commentary tracks for DVDs, though shared annotations would seem to be a less heavy “lift”, in terms of ease of production and consumption.
Would there be an interest in shared annotations? I think so, especially for works that hold up under repeated readings, where you want to see the kind of notes and related factoids that we now expect in movies, via DVD extras and the IMDB.
* Access to authors: Two-way communication between author and reader is a net positive; it allows authors to interact with readers between books, and gives readers a deeper connection to the author (even if can be a relatively superficial one, like that of a rock star and fan follower on Facebook or MySpace). Remember, though: there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch — maintaining ties to a community takes time and effort.
I’m not even going to get into the game-changers of electronic distribution and free / free-ish e-books.
The printed book still has many advantages over electronic readers — outside of pure aesthetics and durability, I think it’s still easier to browse and skim in print. And I still don’t know a good analog to riffing through the pages to find a particular passage, where you know it’s a left-hand page in the latter part of the book but little else. (I guess text search takes care of some of that, as well as throwing the question out to the hive mind.) But as the technology (and copyright and intellectual property law) keeps advancing, we’re going to see a lot more social activity around books.
Have a thought about shared annotations, online book discussions, or e-book reader community features you’d like to see? Or are you a die-hard print reader? Please leave a comment.
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