How do we encounter books these days? ⁂ Antilibraries Analects ⁂

The past year has brought many areas of dramatic change. Today I want to talk about one: the ways we encounter books.

Of course this landscape — of book buying, borrowing, browsing, and reading in all its forms — has been changing for a long time. But lately this change has accelerated!

I used to go to bookstores all the time, just to browse. In the past year I think I've entered two, in a decidedly time limited and social distanced capacity.

Now, hardly a month goes by these days without discovering a new book app, reading startup, or online library experiment. A new virtual bookstore, book club, or publishing platform.

Let's explore the emerging possibility space of book encounters, from browsing and discovery to social reading contexts; from the evolution of traditional and early digital reading to more hybrid or post-internet possibilities…

Reading, Traditionally

First, acknowledging the common book encounters we've been sitting with all our lives:

The books we already have at home on our shelves
Bookstores, neighborhood fabric, sites for serendipity
Local libraries, where we can borrow, place holds, hang out
Friends and family, whose books we borrow, or recommendations we act on

Books and Internet 1.0

Next, acknowledging our foundational digital book experiences, the ones we've gradually witnessed over the past years:

Browsing online, reading blogs, book reviews
Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop, other online bookstores
Social media (for me: primarily Twitter) where we can discover what friends are reading, share capsule reviews and recs
Digital library borrowing, with ebook apps like Libby

New Biblio-Frontiers…

After the above, what do we see emerging as experimental, post-bookstore, post-website, hybrid models for our brushes with book?

I feel like lately I'm experiencing the internet as not just a destination for browsing and discovery, but a substrate for community and personal interactions e.g. video calls, book clubs, show and tells…

An Ocean of Books, browsing authors as islands, literature as map
Books that are websites, an Are.na collection of just that
Readwise creating new ways to collect and revisit book notes and highlights; library experiments built with Roam Research
Bookshelf as a space for creating and exploring book mixtapes
New academic publishing platforms like Manifold ("reading, annotation, and community…")
Virtual shelves and browsing experiences, some drawing on earlier affordances, like Library Explorer from Open Library, and the incredible Library Stack project for exploring art and design publications
Fascinating and controversial: the "National Emergency Library" from the Internet Archive, pushing the limits of law and libraries
Interesting recommendation experiences like Recommend Me A Book, where you can read the first page without seeing the cover
Ideas for mapping book influences (who blurbs books? who do authors thank? seeking "ways to explore the network of influence and gratitude")
A proliferation of remote reading groups: from virtual Silent Book Clubs to short story reading groups to Emergence Magazine's community events
New ways of buying books: Bookshop.org taking off this past year as indie book-buying alternative; many more bookstores fulfilling online orders or even delivering; small presses (e.g. Archipelago, Haymarket, Verso) offering free ebooks
And even radical co-operative online bookstores like Massive Bookshop and their awesome "Book Hook-Up"
I've hosted a few Antilibraries show and tell events as well, both pre-pandemic and more recent remote ones, small groups sharing unread books

Some of these emerge from a place of pure experimentation; some from necessity. I find all of them welcome and fascinating — the more shades of book encounter, the better.

What changes have you seen in how you browse, discover, or otherwise experience books?

Feb. 21, 2021, 4:46 p.m.

Antilibraries Analects