Nature editorial: Back to books?

Nature recently published an editorial urging authors to reconsider writing books due to advancements made by ebook readers:

"As the era of the electronic book dawns, perhaps hastened by Apple's much-touted iPad, researchers should prime themselves to take advantage of the spacious book format. Unlike a tweet, blog or research paper, a good book offers space to breathe, to contemplate complex ideas and to convey a mode of thinking.

[…]

Rather than limit scientific discourse to curt journal papers, researchers should embrace the book as another means of expressing not only their insights but also their visions. Through the various styles of writing, all aspects of science can be explored and laid out for posterity and learning. The expansiveness of a book allows sophisticated arguments to be put forward and widely debated; new ideas that cross disciplinary boundaries can more readily be shared and worked through."

As a publishing editor whose work in part involves the acquisition of book projects, I'd like to know --do you agree? Does the advance of ebook technology make you more inclined to consider book publication?

Tags: books, ebooks

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Karam Chand Sharma on February 16, 2010 at 8:25pm

Somethings are inevitable. Some of us passing through this transition will be nostalgic about books because we have learnt that way. But imagine all that wastage of paper and inreturn deforestation has forever destroyed green foorest cover.E-media is here to stay and make further progress although disposal of electronic waste has still to be finalised. Reuse of most of things is one solution and we must emphasise that.
E-mails, SMS have changed us forever and click of mouse can acess any data you want. It has happened and let us all except the fact.

Permalink Reply by Marc-Oliver Gewaltig on February 17, 2010 at 3:50pm

I think you should ask the question differently: With all the easy electronic means of publication, do I still need to worry about how to sell my book to a publisher? Today, anybody can publish his or her book. The internet is full of self-published ebooks.

What keeps writers and scientists from doing so is credibility. We trust a book more, if comes from a known publisher, like we trust a paper more, if it was published in a "known" journal.

Just my two cents.

Permalink Reply by Erik Bo Jensen on February 18, 2010 at 6:42am

I prefer books and not e-books

Permalink Reply by Erik Bo Jensen on February 21, 2010 at 1:04am

I think that e-books edited by wellknown publishers as springer verlag is the way in the future, despite the fact that i personally prefer printed books. But I know I have to adapt to what we can`t avoid.

Permalink Reply by Karam Chand Sharma on February 21, 2010 at 3:32am

Surely nostalgia about reading printed material will be there with our generation. Change is the rule of nature. The biggest suffere in this whole change will be handwriting. For many of us handwriting reflected the personality behind this which we do not see today. For those of us who had beautiful handwriting this change is hard to digest. The debate of printed versus digital version has been settled quite a few years back.

Permalink Reply by Chun-feng Shang on February 21, 2010 at 10:51pm

Another problem may be about the credit. Our current system about credit attribution seems to rely on the publication reviewing system of journals.

Permalink Reply by Erik Bo Jensen on February 23, 2010 at 12:00pm

Dear Ann. I think it is much more effective and a possible better succes of one`s ideas to publish them as papers or in a e-book edited by a wellknown publisher like f ex springer verlag, than to use The NeuroNetwork to publish someones experiences. Thanks for your advises