Burning the Page: The eBook revolution and the future of reading

process will only continue to accelerate along the lines I described above. How long will it be before we see a book written as a series of comments on an Amazon product review? How long before we see a novel published only on Facebook as a series of posts, a novel that is inherently viral?
    Epistolary fiction used to be popular—that is, fiction based on exchanges of letters—but I think we’ll start to see more fiction shaped by the forces (and mannerisms) of social networks. This has already been happening in Japan, where the first cell phone novel comprised of text messages was sold in 2003. It became so wildly popular that a franchise of print books, manga, TV shows, and a movie was spun off from it. There are cell phone applications available in South Africa specifically targeted at letting you write—and receive—novels in text-message format.
    In cell phone novels, you receive text messages directly from the author. If you’ve got an unlimited text message plan on your phone, I totally encourage you to try one of these books—just search for “cell phone novel” on the web and look for a book that’s interesting! These books are written in a sparse, sublime style. They come at you like text messages from a friend. And yes, they have tension. Intrigue. And suspense. And in some of these, you can write back to the author to ask for clarification or a change in the plot.
    For the first time, authors and readers are able to talk directly with one another. Reading has always been a solitary pursuit, and even book clubs have been small affairs. But now book discussions can cross nations’ lines. There’s no limit to how many readers can cram into a chat room or participate online with Facebook or Twitter. Now, at last, ebooks have ignited the conversation between authors and readers.
    If that’s not engagement, what is?

Bookmark: Autographs
    Personally, I find book autographs amusing. I look at them like calling cards from the late 1800s, which date back to a more demure, genteel time. But that said, I too have autographed books in my collection. And I’m not alone. Many fans and book aficionados collect author’s autographs, not just because a signed book is more valuable, but because it solidifies a connection between reader and author. It brings you closer to the work, as close as you can come without being a character in a book.
    One day people will talk about print books in a wonderful folkloric way, as if to say, “You know, people once met with the author in person, presented a book to him, and had him sign it with his own hands! In ink!” Sadly, in the ebook world, autographs don’t quite make sense. You can sign the back of a Kindle, but that can maybe hold two or three signatures before it runs out of space. More if you use a tablet e-reader, of course. And besides, the autographs will smudge off.
    Inventors are even now coming up with complex Rube Goldberg ways of making autographs work digitally, involving complex combinations of Wi-Fi and flash drives and digital cameras and custom software, but there’s nothing like print to let you see the nuances of a signature, the quality and personality of an author’s penmanship.
    True, you could have a feature on an e-reader that lets an author dictate the autograph and say something like, “Dear Mary, you look great today. Thanks for buying this book. Hugs and kisses, Mark Twain,” or even something like an embedded video to show you standing with the author, a camera in the back of an iPad perhaps being used to capture you and embed the footage into the book itself. It’s a way to take an old metaphor from the past and reclothe it for the future. Rather than trying to get complex systems in place to emulate autographs, I think inventors would be better off creating new features that only work digitally.
    That said, I’ve invented my own system for giving out autographs as part of this book. If you haven’t already signed up through any of the links at the end of each chapter, go to the link at the end of this one to get your own autographed book cover. Signing up gets you not only a personalized autograph posted on your Facebook timeline or Twitter feed, but also lots of other unexpected surprises.
    Ideally, of course, inventions like this would be built right into the software that runs on Kindles or Nooks. You wouldn’t have to click over to a website, because the process would be automatic, built right into your e-reader. And