What are the books of the future? The pur­pose of this blog is to intro­duce new types of dig­i­tal books and leave oth­er resources to cov­er tra­di­tion­al print­ed books and even cur­rent ebooks. Although there will prob­a­bly be print­ed books for a while before they dis­ap­pear from every­day read­ing, this blog has noth­ing to add to the vast amount of infor­ma­tion already avail­able on print­ed books.

Like­wise, ebooks are the pre­dom­i­nant for­mat for dig­i­tal books today and emu­late print­ed books with­out includ­ing the full capa­bil­i­ties of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. This blog has lit­tle to add to the con­sid­er­able infor­ma­tion already avail­able on ebooks. In the future, ebooks may change to become dig­i­tal books that escape the cur­rent con­straints in the mar­ket­place. If so, they will become of inter­est to this blog.

The new types of dig­i­tal books that this blog cov­ers are elec­tron­ic books already invent­ed and to be invent­ed that take full advan­tage of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. That is, they can con­tain diverse media as well as text, pro­vide more func­tion­al­i­ty, be dis­trib­uted in new mar­ket­places, and can pro­vide new means of gen­er­at­ing revenue.

When you think about it, ebooks are just print­ed books in a dig­i­tal for­mat. Their use of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide addi­tion­al func­tions is very thin. Yet, for dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, the sky’s the lim­it for what books can do. The future will see dig­i­tal books with new func­tion­al­i­ty that makes sense. That is, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy will cre­ate new fea­tures and con­ve­niences that read­ers will come to take for grant­ed, as well as spe­cial fea­tures for dif­fer­ent genres.

To launch this blog the ini­tial focus will be on bookapps (i.e., hybrids or PWAs) and web­books, two as yet unex­ploit­ed dig­i­tal book for­mats that make sense for the present as well as for the future. And we will eval­u­ate the vast poten­tial mar­kets for such innovations.

A bookapp is a dig­i­tal book in an Apple or Android app for­mat. A web­book is a web­site that is a book and noth­ing more; a book that is a web­site. There is an unlim­it­ed amount to be said about these for­mats, but cer­tain­ly they aren’t the end of the sto­ry. As authors, pub­lish­ers, and geeks invent new dig­i­tal book for­mats and fea­tures, this blog will cov­er such developments.

Beyond dig­i­tal book for­mats and fea­tures is the new and devel­op­ing infra­struc­ture for pub­lish­ing such books effec­tive­ly, effi­cient­ly, and lucra­tive­ly. Indeed, lucra­tive­ly is an impor­tant goal for most authors and pub­lish­ers. The infra­struc­ture is already dense and grow­ing. There are unlim­it­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties, and this blog will attempt to throw light on many of them.

So there you are: dig­i­tal book for­mats, fea­tures, and pub­lish­ing infra­struc­ture that focus on the books of the future with par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to gen­er­at­ing income.