A Short History of EBooks

by Marie Lebert

2004: AUTHORS ARE CREATIVE ON THE NET

= [Overview]

Some authors have enjoyed creating websites, posting their works and communicating with readers by email. Other authors have begun searching how using hyperlinks could expand their writing towards new directions, while linking it to images and sound. Jean-Paul switched from being a print author to being an hypermedia author, while enjoying the freedom given by online (self-)publishing: "The internet allows me to do without intermediaries such as record companies, publishers and distributors. Most of all, it allows me to crystallize what I have in my head: the print medium only allows me to partly do that. (…) Surfing the web is like radiating in all directions (I am interested in something and I click on all the links on a home page) or like jumping around (from one click to another, as the links appear). You can do this in the written media, of course. But the difference is striking. So the internet changed how I write. You don't write the same way for a website as you do for a script or a play."

= The internet as a research tool

Murray Suid is a writer of educational books and material living in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley. He has also written books for kids, multimedia scripts and screenplays. How did using the internet change his professional life? He wrote in September 1998: "The internet has become my major research tool, largely - but not entirely - replacing the traditional library and even replacing person-to-person research. Now, instead of phoning people or interviewing them face to face, I do it via email. Because of speed, it has also enabled me to collaborate with people at a distance, particularly on screenplays. (I've worked with two producers in Germany.) Also, digital correspondence is so easy to store and organize, I find that I have easy access to information exchanged this way. Thus, emailing facilitates keeping track of ideas and materials. The internet has increased my correspondence dramatically. Like most people, I find that email works better than snail mail. My geographic range of correspondents has also increased - extending mainly to Europe. In the old days, I hardly ever did transatlantic penpalling. I also find that emailing is so easy, I am able to find more time to assist other writers with their work - a kind of a virtual writing group. This isn't merely altruistic. I gain a lot when I give feedback. But before the internet, doing so was more of an effort."

Murray was among the first authors to add a website to his books - an opportunity that many would soon adopt: "If a book can be web-extended (living partly in cyberspace), then an author can easily update and correct it, whereas otherwise the author would have to wait a long time for the next edition, if indeed a next edition ever came out. (…) I do not know if I will publish books on the web - as opposed to publishing paper books. Probably that will happen when books become multimedia. (I currently am helping develop multimedia learning materials, and it is a form of teaching that I like a lot - blending text, movies, audio, graphics, and - when possible - interactivity)."

He added in August 1999: "In addition to 'web-extending' books, we are now web-extending our multimedia (CD-ROM) products - to update and enrich them."

In October 2000, "our company - EDVantage Software - has become an internet company instead of a multimedia (CD-ROM) company. We deliver educational material online to students and teachers."

= The internet as a novel "character"

Alain Bron lives in Paris, France. He is a consultant in information systems and a writer. The internet is one of the "characters" of his second novel, "Sanguine sur toile" (Sanguine on the web), available in print from Editions du Choucas in 1999, and in PDF format from Editions 00h00 in 2000.

Alain wrote in November 1999: "In French, 'toile' means the web as well as the canvas of a painting, and 'sanguine' is the red chalk of a drawing as well as one of the adjectives derived from blood ('sang' in French). But would a love of colors justify a murder? 'Sanguine sur toile' is the strange story of an internet surfer caught up in an upheaval inside his own computer, which is being remotely operated by a very mysterious person whose only aim is revenge. I wanted to take the reader into the worlds of painting and enterprise, which intermingle, escaping and meeting up again in the dazzle of software. The reader is invited to try to untangle for himself the threads twisted by passion alone. To penetrate the mystery, he will have to answer many questions. Even with the world at his fingertips, isn't the internet surfer the loneliest person in the world? In view of the competition, what is the greatest degree of violence possible in an enterprise these days? Does painting tend to reflect the world or does it create another one? I also wanted to show that images are not that peaceful. You can use them to take action, even to kill."

What part does the internet play in his novel? "The internet is a character in itself. Instead of being described in its technical complexity, it is depicted as a character that can be either threatening, kind or amusing. Remember the computer screen has a dual role - displaying as well as concealing. This ambivalence is the theme throughout. In such a game, the big winner is of course the one who knows how to free himself from the machine's grip and put humanism and intelligence before everything else."

= The web and its hyperlinks

Like many artists, Jean-Paul began searching how hyperlinks could expand his writing towards new directions. He switched from being a print author to being an hypermedia author, and created "Cotres furtifs" (Furtive Cutters) as a website "telling stories in 3D". He enjoyed the freedom given by online (self-)publishing, and wrote in August 1999: "The internet allows me to do without intermediaries, such as record companies, publishers and distributors. Most of all, it allows me to crystallize what I have in my head: the print medium (desktop publishing, in fact) only allows me to partly do that."

He also insisted on the growing interaction between digital literature and technology. "The future of cyber-literature, techno-literature, digital literature or whatever you want to call it, is set by the technology itself. It is now impossible for an author to handle all by himself the words and their movement and sound. A decade ago, you could know well each of Director, Photoshop or Cubase (to cite just the better known software), using the first version of each. That is not possible any more. Now we have to know how to delegate, find more solid financial partners than Gallimard, and look in the direction of Hachette-Matra, Warner, the Pentagon and Hollywood. At best, the status of multimedia director (?) will be the one of video director, film director, manager of the product. He is the one who receives the golden palms at Cannes, but who would never have been able to earn them just on his own. As twin sister (not a clone) of the cinematograph, cyber- literature (video + the link) will be an industry, with a few isolated craftsmen on the outer edge (and therefore with below- zero copyright)."

Jean-Paul added in June 2004: "Surfing the web is like radiating in all directions (I am interested in something and I click on all the links on a home page) or like jumping around (from one click to another, as the links appear). You can do this in the written media, of course. But the difference is striking. So the internet changed how I write. You don't write the same way for a website as you do for a script or a play. (…)

In fact, it is not the internet which changed how I write, it is the first Mac that I discovered through the self-learning of HyperCard. I still remember how astonished I was during the month when I was learning about buttons, links, surfing by analogies, objects or images. The idea that a simple click on one area of the screen allowed me to open a range of piles of cards, and each card could offer new buttons and each button opened on to a new range, etc. In brief, the learning of everything on the web that today seems really banal, for me it was a revelation (it seems Steve Jobs and his team had the same shock when they discovered the ancestor of the Mac in the laboratories of Rank Xerox). Since then I write directly on the screen: I use the print medium only occasionally, to fix up a text, or to give somebody who is allergic to the screen a kind of photograph, something instantaneous, something approximate. It is only an approximation, because print forces us to have a linear relationship: the text is developing page after page (most of the time), whereas the technique of links allows another relationship to the time and space of imagination. And, for me, it is above all the opportunity to put into practice this reading/writing 'cycle', whereas leafing through a book gives only an idea - which is vague because the book is not conceived for that."