Social Reading. Platforms, Applications, Clouds and Tags

288 Pages·2013·8.611 MB·English

by  José-Antonio Cordón-García, Julio Alonso-Arévalo, Raquel Gómez-Díaz and Daniel Linder (Auth.)

Social Reading
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Social Reading

Platforms, applications,
clouds and tags
J -A C -G ,
OSÉ NTONIO ORDÓN ARCÍA
J A -A ,
ULIO LONSO RÉVALO
R G -D
AQUEL ÓMEZ ÍAZ AND
D L
ANIEL INDER
Chandos Publishing
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Woodhead Publishing Limited
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UK
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First published in 2013
ISBN: 978-1-84334-726-2 (print)
ISBN: 978-1-78063-392-3 (online)
Chandos Information Professional Series ISSN: 2052-210X (print)
and ISSN: 2052-2118 (online)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013950530
© J.-A. Cordón-García, J. Alonso-Arévalo, R. Gómez-Díaz and D. Linder, 2013
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1
2
3
4
5
6
Figures and tables 7
8
9
Figures
10
1
1.1 The ‘book- fool’ 9
2
1.2 The Gutenberg parenthesis 55 3
2.1 Appearance of the library of a reading application 87 4
5
5.1 Kno 154
6
5.2 Goodreads 174
7
5.3 Library on Goodreads 174 8
5.4 Review of a work on Goodreads 175 9
20
5.5 Statistics on Goodreads 176
1
5.6 Readmill I 181
2
5.7 Readmill II 182 3
5.8 Readmill. Chronology of use I 182 4
5
5.9 Readmill. Chronology of use II 183
6
5.10 Readmill reading synchronisation on various reading
7
devices 184
8
5.11 Social network of readers on Readmill 184 9
6.1 Amazon model 208 30
1
7.1 Factors which have led to the development of social
2
labelling 221
3
7.2 The evolution of indexing from the agent point of view 225
4
7.3 The social indexing triangle 226 5
7.4 Types of folksonomies 229 6
7
7.5 Types of social tagging and social value 232
8
7.6 Relations between the elements of CiteUlike 242
9
8.1 Annoto ergo sum 259 40
41R
ix
Social reading
Tables
1.1 Contrast and comparison of conventional and digital
readers 72
2.1 Most frequent reading personalisation options 83
2.2 Most frequent contents search options 84
2.3 Most frequent contents browsing options 84
2.4 Most frequent text annotation options 85
2.5 Connections to contents 89
2.6 Digital reading applications listed by operating system
and type 101
5.1 Social reading taxonomy 157
5.2 The Kids & Family Reading Report 159
5.3 The philosophy behind Rethink Books 170
5.4 Philosophy of Openmargin 179
7.1 Social indexing applications 236

x
1
2
3
4
5
6
Introduction
7
8
Abstract: The emergence of new information technologies, in 9
particular the Internet, has triggered new ways of writing and new 10
ways of reading which are breaking away from traditional 1
conceptions of the book as a printed fi nal product. As these new 2
conceptions give way to reconceptions of the book, they are 3
reshaping the creative process by which books are written and read. 4
As new notions are fostered, the creative spirit of writers and readers 5
and the function of books spans out in many directions and takes 6
many different shapes, spiralling the creative process away from 7
publishing circuits. The very importance of the contract- based and 8
technological nature of the printed book industry becomes diluted 9
amidst a variety of alternative forms that have broadened the 20
industry beyond its traditional boundaries. 1
2
Key words: publishing industry, social reading. 3
4
The development of the Web 2.0 and its numerous applications have led 5
to an exponential growth in the number of authors and texts which 6
mingle with each other in an ever- expanding, prolifi c space that is now 7
impossible to fathom. The revolution of electronic texts in the publishing 8
industry is a phenomenon that operates on various levels simultaneously, 9
for it affects the technology of text (re)production, the paper or electronic 30
support systems used for writing, and the reading habits of the end user. 1
We are still at the threshold of a new era, of a transitional period of what 2
in the future will be called ‘digital cradle books’, in a time when raw texts 3
with no author’s editing are being launched into cyberspace, in a time 4
when texts with editorial supervision are outnumbered by unedited texts. 5
Reading habits are also being altered by the appearance of new devices 6
and formats, bringing with them completely new discourses and realities 7
that need to be analysed. One of the most signifi cant changes is in the 8
area of text reception. In the traditional editing/publishing process the 9
author–editor relationship was more or less taken for granted, which led 40
41R
1
Social reading
to a very passive attitude on the part of readers, who were mere receptors
of the fi nal texts unable to intervene in the form or content. However,
reading in a digital environment has fl ipped this model, displacing much
of the prominence once solely reserved for authors and editors to the
readers, who can now intervene in the different stages of text production,
distribution and reception. What is called social reading, in its full
array of complexity, is a step futher along the path towards appropriation
of the message which is an inherent part of every communicative
process. Reader intervention in the written text and the communicative
collaboration and exchange between readers and the different agents
in the edition/publication chain are emerging as a new paradigm.
This shift is fostered by a new mentality which is more sociable and
cooperative, and by new technologies which support it with cutting-e dge
developments that enable new intellectual and informational competences
to emerge.
Reading is constantly changing as a result of the changing socioeconomic
and technological context in which it is embedded. The emergence of
new forms of communication and new media, such as those mentioned
above, is determining a variety of new attitudes and behaviours that need
to be analysed so as to diagnose accurately to what extent these habits
and reading practices are changing and what these changes mean. One of
the most frequently recurring issues that crops up in the professional
literature is the increasingly important need to document changes such
as those taking place within collaborative reading systems, which are
under- and misrepresented in public reading spaces and thus complicate
the solution to problems associated with information literacy and
exponentially increase the digital divide in growing population centres
both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Social reading is starting to make inroads into the production segment
of the publishing world, which has begun to implement platform- wide
social functionalities in an effort to synergise with readers whose need to
act socially is encoded into their reader’s DNA. Reading has always
struck up social reaction, in the sense that readers have always wanted to
transmit to other readers their impressions, feelings and evaluations of
what they read, and this constitutes an implict part of the reading process.
Yet while in the analogical universe such transmissions were restricted to
very small circles, such as traditional reading clubs, in the digital universe
of globalised communication the outreach for such transmissions can be
worldwide. This obviously affects the conditions in which digital readers
set about reading books, but it also affects the conditions in which
2
Introduction
publishing houses offer digital books to readers. In this new social reading
paradigm, visibility of texts for sale and easy searchability become
extraordinarily important, given the capacity of readers to penetrate
general and specialised social networks and recommend the titles they
liked or criticise the ones they did not.
Publishers respond to a societal demand for the production and
dissemination of symbolic goods, and also to the basic demand for
constant renovation in the products they offer. The drive for innovation
and constant change leads to the production of prototypes that compete
against one another and in order to perpetuate the system there is a
constant need for new input of ideas, text types, book formats and so on.
Indeed, there are volumes published which are not commercially viable in
the strictest sense, but they are published in order to create, develop and
maintain a well-b alanced catalogue. Many titles are published in order to
further industry- wide innovation and to anticipate emerging readers’
tastes. Such innovative titles are high risk, to be sure, but they prove that
publishing houses are committed to innovation; such titles are launched
based on their esteemed cultural value rather than their estimated
commercial value, and their reception in the market- place is highly
unpredictable.
Despite the unpredictability of the market, consumer behaviour is subject
to a set of variables which are impossible to assess before embarking on
a marketing study and campaign, and many of these variables escape the
detection, calculation and planning that publishing houses do prior to a
launch. On the other hand, the element of surprise is possible, and even
common; often something that had not been expected to do well meets
with success and these results are fi gured into future calculations which
try to replicate the experience.
The survival of the fi ttest in the book industry, an industry that
measures success in terms of rapid sales, does not imply that the books
sold are good or bad. Such value judgements are often indicative of the
socialisation processes behind the success of a book and are often the
result of long- term dynamics in which an excellent book may remain
dormant for lengthy periods then suddenly take off. The market for
literature would be relatively straightforward if it were programmable,
but it is not. The natural uncertainty which defi nes the market makes it
desirable to attract readers not strictly by virtue of a book’s literary value
but by its social value. Thereby, the capacity for publishers to intervene
in social networks, encouraging positive evaluation of the literature they
publish, becomes even more important.
3
Social reading
The success or failure of a published work depends on a complex set of
factors that are diffi cult to completely isolate and anticipate. Economic
factors themselves account for some 90% of all works being removed
from sales shelves within a year. Negative criticism, poor distribution,
low publicity and adverse consumer habits do away with another large
part of all books published. In order to be profi table, book publishers
follow increasingly intensive production and distribution models, which
leads to fast turnaround times at the booksellers; this often means that
many published works stand no chance of reaching their natural
readership, if such a thing indeed exists. The number of books published
each year is so voluminous that only those which reach minimal levels of
visibility will have the opportunity to enjoy any market share at all. Not
only does the level of visibility of a work determine whether it will be a
success, but easy purchasability of the work will also be of paramount
importance.
The major challenge that literature is facing today is how to
accommodate new communicative patterns and models of electronic text
production and how not to relinquish its commitment to the spread of
ideas and the preservation of values such as critical awareness and
refl ection, which are the basic core of what makes literature signifi cant.
According to Holderling, a culture can only remain alive as long as it has
the capacity to wonder. In order for the culture of book publishing to
remain alive, it must evolve in the direction of collaboration and
socialisation. The culture of social networks, consisting of information
fl ows and virtual interconnectedness, are the very expression of the
processes that prevail in our cultural and symbolic lives, processes of
exchange and interaction between physically disconnected positions that
support the cultural and symbolic agents of our society.
This book attempts to address some of the issues implicit in this whole
evolutionary process from the individual to the collective. This historical
process has seen changes in the conception of the book and the reading
processes themselves and has kept pace with societal and technological
developments. We are at a convergence when digital and analogue books
and discourses are both being used simultaneously, at times antagonistically
and at times complementary; this is a time when all aspects of both of
these models are being affected by this disruption. Chapter 1 is an in-
depth analysis of this phenomenon
The adaptation of reading to different digital environments is not a
natural process. In analogical reading, a direct relationship is established
between writer and reader, while in digital reading the mediation of
4