Page 135 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

During this initial phase there was much talk of “disintermediation” and many agents in the value chain of traditional books reflected on their position and the role they might play to ensure their future in a world where most content could be handled and distributed in digital format, dispensing with some of the actors that tradi- tionally performed these tasks.
Around 2000 it became apparent that these huge expectations had not been met and we experienced a period of open scepticism about the ability of the digital revolution to transform the publishing sector. Many of the companies which had chosen to experiment with the new technologies (for digitising content, for creating e-readers...) readjusted their focus and the field of digital publishing slid into recession.
On top of the disappointment of the early years, the economic crisis triggered further difficulties that led caution and austerity to become the maxims for general practice in the publishing sector, with a few honourable exceptions. But mistakes and hesitation have not prevented the emergence of electronic books from being an unquestionable reality. The data bears this out, as the production and consumption of digital content have not ceased to grow.
New forms of storytelling
In addition, the Web and electronic devices (e-readers, tablets, video consoles...) have opened up a whole host of new possibilities for creators. The incorporation of sound, moving images, proposals for interaction or gamification, intelligent sensors, interactive printing and other features into reading materials can be, and in fact is, used in advertising but it is also giving rise to excellent examples that enrich readers’ aesthetic experience and reading experience, as pointed out in previous sections.
Owing to the fears of traditional agents of the book value chain in relation to this revolution,
slow progress is being made in the availability of a broad and varied catalogue of enriched digital reading material. Most authors and publishers who have decided to go digital, aware that the text will be presented in multiple formats for multiple devices, have done so tentatively, that is, digitising their titles without providing any added value that harnesses the potential of technology.
Others (manufacturers of devices, global agents, developers of applications), in contrast, have taken into account the capabilities of the new digital reading formats and devices (Internet connection, geographical and temporal location, enhanced reading options that enable the reader to interact, performing searches automatically, making notes, underlining information of interest and sharing it simultaneously on social media, liquid texts, etc.) and have prompted the emer- gence of new ways of telling stories.75
This latter approach is full of highly attractive possibilities that have been little explored and are particularly promising with respect to prod- ucts for children and teens. We will examine a few specific examples below. We will not discuss the proposals relating to the new web or social media tools or the possibilities this environment offers for collaborative writing, or those that take into account new cultural consumption habits (such as literature by instalments on mobiles or stories in chat format).
It is very important to be aware of what is being done in publishing digital materials and what kind of relationship is established with the previous culture of physical books and with the multime- dia and videogame industries. This diachronic approach is essential to understanding the new reading materials, as they combine various codes and languages that had hitherto been separate and are now being merged and integrated to create new, more specific products with a language of their own that has arisen from the digital medium.
As we will see in due course, teaching about and promoting digital reading requires mediators
AC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 2018
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Readers in the digital age