Print Is Dead: Books in our Digital Age

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Palgrave Macmillan, Nov 13, 2007 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 300 pages
For over 1500 years books have weathered numerous cultural changes remarkably unaltered. Through wars, paper shortages, radio, TV, computer games, and fluctuating literacy rates, the bound stack of printed paper has, somewhat bizarrely, remained the more robust and culturally relevant way to communicate ideas. Now, for the first time since the Middle Ages, all that is about to change. 
 
Newspapers are struggling for readers and relevance; downloadable music has consigned the album to the format scrap heap, and the digital revolution is now about to leave books on the high shelf of history. In Print Is Dead, Gomez explains how authors, producers, distributors, and readers must not only acknowledge these changes, but drive digital book creation, standards, storage, and delivery as the first truly transformational thing to happen in the world of words since the printing press.
 

Contents

introduction
stop the presses
1byte flight
2us and them
3newspapers are no longer news
totally wired
4generation download
5generation upload
7ebooks and the revolution that didnt happen
8writers in a digital future
9readers in a digital future
10will books disappear?
afterword
notes
acknowledgements
Index

6on demand everything
saying goodbye to the book

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About the author (2007)

Jeff Gomez lectures on digital information trends at publishing industry events throughout America, and teaches at New York University. Jeff has written four novels, including Our Noise.

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