It’s a truism that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Yet in today’s world of e-books, apps and other forms of digital storytelling, the very concept of a book is changing rapidly.

To judge the effect of technology on what may or may not lie between two covers — and how readers interact with and share that content — the Bay Area Book Festival is bring together innovators from both Silicon Valley and the region’s literary scene.

Robin Sloan, author of “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore” and moderator of a festival panel called “New Views of Narrative: How Technology Interfaces With Story,” is quick to note that the relationship between the tech and literary worlds is far from adversarial.

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“The people who are interested in reading and publishing are interested in all of it,” he said. “We’re not picking sides; we’re all navigating a path through traditional books and digital publishing — it’s like a big buffet. We’re starting with the assumption that it’s all good and it’s all exciting.”

Sloan’s panel discussion, which takes place at 11 a.m. Saturday, June 6, in the Marsh Theater, includes Narrative Technologies founder and CEO Lise Quintana, digital author Eli Horowitz (“The Silent History,” a serial novel told through an app) and Russell Quinn, co-creator of “The Silent History” and formerly McSweeney’s digital media director.

“We’ll be pushing the idea of publishing forward, and maybe come up with some ideas that have never been out there before,” Sloan said.

Narrative Technologies, based in Santa Cruz and one of the festival’s sponsors, is trying to change both how writers write and readers read, according to Quintana.

Through its e-book platform Lithomobilus, authors can create nonlinear narratives from scratch or, along with publishers, expand on existing works. Readers, meanwhile, can enjoy extensive annotations and collaborative storytelling in works available through the Lithomobilus app for iPad and iPhone, such as “Alice in Wonderland” and Quintana’s “The Strangely-Browne Episode.”

“As writers, we talk about writing as a conversation between the author and the reader, and I really wanted to give the reader more of a voice in that conversation,” said Quintana, who also uses Lithomobilus to publish a quarterly literary journal, NonBinary Review.

It seems no matter what the platform, “people still love engaging with and being entranced by a great story,” said Julie Haddon, vice president of marketing and editorial at Scribd, a San Francisco digital library with more than 100 million users in 75 countries. A festival sponsor, Scribd gives subscribers access to almost a million books, 50,000 audiobooks and, as of February, more than 15,000 comic books — and a forum in which to share their experiences.

“Books are like no other medium; they’re so personal to you — just you and the pages, or you and the screen,” Haddon explained. “We try to make reading a book a social experience because of that, to connect people who have similar passions, tastes and curiosity. You can highlight different quotes, and annotate them and share that. It’s a really important with an e-book to have books be more social; it’s a natural behavior to connect with others who have a similar reading experience or took a journey yourself.”

That behavior is also a driving force behind Goodreads, an online community of 40 million members who share their reading lists, reviews and recommendations of all kinds of books.

“We’re convinced that, in the next few years, social is going to drive one of the biggest changes in publishing,” said Otis Chandler, the company’s CEO and co-founder. “We already know that people tend to find most of their books through friends and we see that happening every minute on Goodreads. With more and more people accessing information on their mobile devices, social becomes even more influential. ... We’re just at the beginning with what we can do."

A Bay Area Book Festival sponsor, Goodreads was also founded in San Francisco, where exploring boundaries in literature and technology seems to come with the territory, as several panelists noted.

“The West Coast is the place where people are willing to take risks with things, to rethink and reinvent pretty much anything,” Quintana said.
https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Authors-readers-explore-the-digital-world-6299606.php
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