Frankfurt was abuzz this year with a variety of talking points for publishers, booksellers and related stakeholders all facing an exciting new phase in the evolving story of human-kinds finest invention, the book.
The guest of honour this year was the Netherlands and Flanders region. I was most pleased to see the vast array and depth of available content from all genres and variety of forms. The availability of book content has never been more engaging for people to enjoy, from pop-up books to holographic electronic reserves of digital content. Now more than ever, there really is something for everyone to find accessible.
Some of the most interesting topics for me and other trade visitors related to digital were:
New commercial applications for authored content including live translation, miniaturization of learning, soft DRM, altmetrics in the publishing production workflows and the ensuing product life cycle including library e-cataloguing with extended MARC, adaptive e-books and course content personalisation, use of embedded gamification assets in educational content, virtual reality applications, text mining and augmented reality.
New laws and amendments to laws relating to intellectual property rights and the concept of “fair use”. In light of the most recent US Court decision that went against the Publishers (OUP, CUP and SAGE) of academic material at Georgia State University. The court held in favour of GSU to provide students with the digital academic material as fair use instead of access by digital license via the publisher. This is an example of a challenge that is an impediment for booksellers into markets as diverse as those in the EU, the US, India and soon to SA as the new Copyright Amendment bill is set for Parliament.
Self publishing platforms for authors that take into account a multiplicity of publishing forms for their works and the problem of dicoverability. Whether it’s for print with options for binding type and paper stock to e-book for sale or open access. There are now so many mind-boggling opportunities available for authors to exploit eBook content as a as once-off, periodical, serial or crowd-sourced. New technologies available in DIY CMS platforms and plugins via SaaS are the new frontier for business models in the arts.
My most intriguing experiences this year were with the various demonstrations of virtual reality as it applies in the book industry. It was delightful to see books literally come to life with end-user technology that is increasingly easier to use and widely available as “wearables”. An example of a typical use case was in a demo of a virtual tour guide of historical places in Italy. School children get onto a stationery bike wearing a pair of VR goggles. The bike sends telemetry information to a computer that then gives an accurate representation of relative speed, heading and angle of approach as the student pedals through a historic town and is instructed to gesture at relevant buildings, statues and other works of significance. This information is presented on a smart-board which also displays what the pupil (in biology and identity) sees through the VR headset goggles. The display is of a 3D rendering of the town with the cycler’s position in it relative to the objets de artes in real time being examined by a teacher for comprehension of the lesson. These virtual representations would have been illustrations or figures from a book in 2D.
Another demonstration of how a book can come to life is by 3D augmented reality. In it’s basic form, certain pages in a book are tagged with spatial recognition software like an invisible QR code. When the reader reaches this page, 3 D content is available for viewing via a wearable device or any other hand held hardware with a camera and the decoding software app.
Imagine reading Disney’s “Jungle Book” and seeing the animated characters literally jump and leap off the pages. This literally is books coming to life in front of a reader’s eyes. In academic applications, such technology gives students the ability to model complex structures in STEM courses with a view that was previously unseen on a book page in 2D. A biology teacher can move the stomach out of the way, to view the intestines with a swipe of the hand giving students a 360 view of the organs without having to dissect an animal. In another example, chemical bonds can be displayed as per their predicted arrangement in space/time. Similarly, Mathematics equations, Engineering parts etc in multiple dimensions become easier to comprehend.
At this year’s Frankfurt, the overall impression was no longer one of fearing the disruption that digital would bring to publishing and book selling; rather a genuine appreciation for the massive potential in technology to deliver authored content to readers and thus a welcome opportunity to diversify revenue streams from works. With much lowering of the barriers to entry due to the advent of cloud solutions: digital products are now a welcome addition to any bookseller’s basket of goods. I believe people in the book trade by nature are (well-read) savvy enough to seize the benefits of this new and exciting frontier opened up by digital technologies.
Melvin Kaabwe
Digital Chairperson, SA Booksellers Association
