Reading Response and Thinking about Research Questions - Essay Example

Reading Response and Thinking about Research Questions Thoughts about the introduction From reading the introduction of the book, one can have a clue that the book is mainly about how the digital world is affecting publishing of books. The book explores what the digital world means for publishers. It also takes a closer look at how readers need to rethink about practical matters such as metadata, workflow, and design, as well as the assumptions about a book. The book also looks at what the duty of a publisher is.

In addition, the looks at the brave souls that have already plunged into the future; those ones who are doing more than writing, thinking and talking about the future of the book (McGuire & OLeary). Summary about the essays The read essays from the book have different titles and authors. The first essay is written by Brian O’Leary and the title of the essay is “Tools of the Digital Workflow”. The essay basically talks about how the nature, history and business of publishers vary greatly, making it hard to identify a set if preferred tools.

As the content changes to a more robust digital environment, publishers need to make decisions about related services that are licensed or outsourced completely. The second essay is entitled “Why the Book and the Internet Will Merge” and is written by Hugh McGuire. In summary, there is no much incentive for publishers to change books into something that can be read on a screen. The reason for this argument is that many would not prefer reading books from screens. However, most people prefer reading books in form of books and they equally prefer spending most of their time on the internet making funny photos of cats, blogging about what they have done, and contributing to the world’s biggest encyclopedia (McGuire & OLeary).

Interesting about the essays In the first essay, “Tools of the Digital Workflow”, it is interesting to learn that digital workflows greatly helps publishers in thinking about product planning. Even though the practice is still rare, using digital workflows can signal the start of a period of discovering work. It therefore means that event-driven publishing can change into a more continuous model. In the second essay, “Why the Book and the Internet Will Merge”, it is interesting to learn that eBooks have arrived in the market in force.

Unlike in 2008 when only 1% of trade book sales in the United States were eBooks, the number had hit 20% by 2011. With this steady increase in the number of eBooks in the market, the number in expected to hit 50% by the end of 2015 (McGuire & OLeary). Potential paper topics In the large research likely to be written in this class, the following are the possible topics that are likely to be used;1. Designing books in the digital age2. Why digital books will become writable3. The end of public libraryQuestions From the readings, it is possible to come up several questions about them.

Some of these questions would include;1. Why is the number of eBooks overtaking the number of paper books in the trade books?2. Are there possibilities of eBooks in the markets hitting 50% by the end of 2015?3. What will publishers do about the increasing number of eBooks in the markets to save their industry?Work citedMcGuire, Hugh & OLeary, Brian. A Futurists Manifesto. January 10, 2012. Web. January 15, 2015. http://book.pressbooks.com/table-of-content