In an age of unease like this, it can sometimes seem that almost anything is up for grabs. Is there a single feature of the traditional publishing landscape, we begin to wonder, that can’t be disrupted, transformed beyond recognition or threatened with extinction? Even as the ebook begins to achieve mainstream acceptance, we see the beginnings of an anxiety about the book itself. Can it continue to maintain its status as the definitive instantiation of a text in the online realm? Deprived of its physicality, its strokable covers and rustling stock, has it any reality at all, or is it just a graphical metaphor? And if we find the idea of the book dissolving away, what form or forms will come to replace it, in doing that essential job of letting us know exactly what kind of entity it is that we are engaging with when we read? Continue reading →