As a book designer, he draws the line between formless content and definite content.
Formless Content can be reflowed into different formats and not lose any intrinsic meaning. It's content divorced from layout. Most novels and works of non-fiction are Formless.
[...]
Content with form — Definite Content — is almost totally the opposite of Formless Content. Most texts composed with images, charts, graphs or poetry fall under this umbrella. It may be reflowable, but depending on how it’s reflowed, inherent meaning and quality of the text may shift.
Mod believes formless content was the only real choice in the digital realm prior to the iPad, but now there is the possibility that definite content can be reproduced with its original intent.
He goes on to say that the page turning metaphor is weak and that content creation and navigation will be re-imagined over time.
The comments are worthy of your time as well, with some filtering needed between thoughtful and dystopian.
P.S. Click through and see the beautiful layout and graphics that Mod provides to make his case.
Yesterday, Penguin UK unveiled what a book might look like on the iPad.
Again, the word 'book' betrays what amazing abilities that technology like the iPad are going to deliver or as Michael Cader from Publisher's Lunch pointed out many of these abilities already exist in the form of apps at the iTunes Store.
I continue to contend: You don't interact with books, you read them.
A notable exception is flap books and pop-up books in the children's realm and it is no surprise that Penguin was able to quickly conceptualize software equivalent.
If the real change in books is going to be that ability to interact, we need new vocabulary that moves us forward. The word 'ebook' gives us no real idea what is going to appear on the screen. These next iterations better resemble games, programs, or applications.
My temptation would be to call these new creations ibooks to emphasis the their interactivity nature (except for the use of that term by a certain company in Cupertino, CA for several years).
This separation of content from form is an important industry branding issue that currently muddles the publishing marketplace. And in this case, traditional book publishers lose, because of the already existing expectation that we find this sort of functionality in the another marketplace, mainly software.
There has been some good material posted recently on reading.
Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project provided Twelve Tips For More Reading. She share my view that you need to quit reading if something is not working and move on. "There are too many wonderful books to read."
Michael Hyatt posted his How To Read a Non-Fiction Book a few weeks ago. He takes notes in the margins, has a set of symbols for note taking, and dog-ears pages he wants to return to.
Brian Oates at daxle.net says you should jog, walk, and then stroll through a book. "Non-fiction is about learning and can be tackled differently. You should read a non-fiction book on purpose. The more clear you are on why you are reading it and what you want to learn the better."
And if you are really serious, pick up a copy of How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. Here is what they authors say about reading practical titles like business books:
The most important thing to remember about any practical book is that it can never solve the practical problems with which it is concerned. A theoretical book can solve its own problems. But a practical problem can only be solved by action itself. When your practical problem is how to earn a living, a book on how to make friends and influence people cannot solve it, though it may suggest things to do. Nothing short of the doing solves the problem. It is solved only by earning a living. (p193)
I borrowed the title for my ChangeThis essay from Alder and the opening story has me making fun of a kid who is walking around with a copy of the book. Just for the record: I was wrong and would recommend How to Read a Book to anyone who is serious about getting more out of what they read.
"What looks like resistance is often lack of clarity.
What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.
What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem." p17-18
The meme you are going to keep hearing with Switch is about the elephant, the rider, and the path. Chip and I talk about each of those concepts and their effect on our ability to change.
Pricing has gotten more shelf space in the last few years. Through the lens of behavior science, Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational and Richard Thaler's Nudge both provided glimpses into our limited ability to assess prices. Chris Anderson proposed in his book Free that 21st century companies would build business models around the price of zero. There seemed little room for another title.
Yet, Bill Poundstone proves us wrong in Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It). The book is a narrative that threads history, story, science, and business while complementing the aforementioned and others you will find in the business section.
Much of the work on modern day pricing theory started in a still obscure field known as psychophysics. Researchers in the field spent time studying sensory perception. Tests showed our sensory systems are highly dependent on contrast to create meaning. For example, if you want your house to look twice as bright as others in the neighborhood, it doesn't twice as many lights; you'll need to buy four times as many lights.
A number of researchers took these findings into the realm of decision making. Daniel Lahneman and Amos Tversky probably did the most to expand on these ideas.
Take a minute and answer this two-part question they developed:
1. Is the percentage of African nations in the United Nations higher or lower than 65?
2. What is the percentage of African nations in the United Nations?
It turns out that the answer you provide to the second question is heavily swayed by that first question.
When asked in research experiments, the average estimate for question two was above 45 percent. When the number in question one was lowered from 65 percent to 10 percent, the average estimation of question two dropped to 25 percent.
This effect, known as anchoring, has since been confirmed in hundreds of experiments. Real estate agents value homes based on the asking price. Negotiators make more profit on their transactions when they provide the anchor and then make the first offer. And retailers are smart to show the original price alongside the sale price than show the sale price alone.
Poundstone takes some great diversions into the design of restaurant menus, the fact or fiction of whether ending a price in '9' helps improve sales, and the 20 years journey to sell Andy Warhol's estate in Montauk.
One recommendation for readers is to take your time with Priceless. Over the fifty seven short chapters, Poundstone provides a dizzy array of permutations to consider and the slight varieties become hard to separate in the final pages. This is not an indictment of the book. Fewer examples would have removed precious nuance. A simple change in reading style will compensate.
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Priceless is featured in the ebook Free to Flexible: Four Simple Lessons About Cost, Price, Margin and The Options Available to The 21st Century Business. You can download it here.
Recording what it is you learned from reading a book should happen both inside and outside that book.
First of all, get over any fear you have of writing in a book. Business books are meant to be inter- acted with. Take a pen and leave notes in the margins. Get out that pink highlighter you used in college and mark up passages that strike you. The guys at Brand Autopsy used to keep a Dog- Ear Score for the number of pages folded over by the time they reached the end. Tim Sanders,
in his book Love Is the Killer App, suggested that important learning points be written on the first blank page in the front of the book and great quotes for future presentations be recorded on the inside back cover. Personally I became a fan of 3-M Post-It Flags in writing The 100 Best for quickly marking pages that I needed to return to later.
Now you need to share what you have learned with the world. It doesn’t matter how. Pick a form and a medium and go with it. Steve Cunningham at readitfor.me decided videos were the best way to share his passion for business books. Chris Yeh builds book outlines on the aptly titled wiki, bookoutlines. Sean wrote short reviews and provided mind maps drawn on brown paper bags at stickybusinessbooks.com. John Moore uses SlideShare and creates quick presentations with the “money quotes.”
Just write a review—100 characters or 1000 words—and give it to someone to read. You get the idea.
Leaving marks in the book and leaving your own mark about what you learned will help you solve your problem and, in tandem, help others solve theirs.
My friend Ray asked me today if it felt like a whole year had gone by. I said yes. We talked to all sorts of media people, did 20 live events, and answered countless emails from people looking for the right book or idea. It's something that has had my attention the last 365 days.
That is going to change now. I am starting to focus on other projects. Much of the team that made the book happen have moved on to new projects.
The book doesn't really need attention any more. It has found its audience. People are still recommending it to others. And that is awesome.
Today, I got in the mail two copies of the Japanese translation of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time from my good friends at Portfolio.
The Japanese title is "The 100 Best Business Books of The American CEO" (playing off the authors from business book retailer 800-CEO-READ).
Our Japanese publisher Kodansha has done a great job with the book. There was some concern initially about being able to include all 100 books because of translation costs and book length. And it is understandable, the Japanese version comes in at 516 pages versus the American version at 316 pages. I even went as far as developing a shorter list with a new table of contents. It is wonderful to see they decided to include all the selections.
There are some nice details. Kodansha maintained the "Where to Next?" section with the choose your own adventure feature. They assigned a number to each book to help with organization, providing the number in the table of contents and then in the page header. The best part though is the addition of the cover art from the Japanese versions of these books. They kept the American version at the front of the review and added the local versions at the end.
Authors always talk about how cool it is to see their books printed in other languages. I have to agree. It is WAY cool.
In 2003, I was working with my father in his small sheet metal fabrication shop. We were struggling to keep customers and attract new ones. I read Purple Cow from a milk carton and it changed my life and the trajectory of our company.
Lightning does strike twice.
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I keeping changing my mind as I think what Linchpin is about. Seth Godin is certainly writing about work, how it is changing and the opportunities that will create, but it is also about art and change and gifts.
The first part is available in any number of books. The Spring 2010 business book season is full of them. Dan Pink's Drive, The Heath Brothers' Switch and 37 Signals' Rework are all about doing, what gets us to do things, and how we get ourselves to do things different. That is covered in Linchpin as well.
It's the second part, the 'what' we should do, that deserves attention. Here Seth does what he always does: expands the meaning of words. Art is not a painting hanging on the wall in a museum, but rather "a personal gift that changes the recipient." Art creates change, whether stump speech or chocolate cupcake, stone arch or science fair experiment. Everyone can see themselves as artists.
Artists give gifts, Seth says. On this point, most readers will struggle, but Seth comes back to it multiple times. We think of gifts with wrapping paper and bows, given on special occasions. Seth is not talking about the holiday reciprocity with we have come to expect. He says those expectations cripple art and creates an arms-length quid pro quo. Give without expecting anything in return.
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Linchpin has done the same for me that Purple Cow did. Books are often about timing and hearing what you need to hear at the right point in time. I write this review as I start off on a new path in my life, and Seth told me a bunch of things that I needed to hear or maybe just needed to be reminded of.
(You can also listen my interview with Seth Godin here.)
