[P]ublishing, while far from dead, has not moved in one great big step from the world of ink and trees to that of pixels and tablets. Many small, sometimes halting, sometimes diverging paths are being followed, more or less simultaneously and with fascinating results. Digital publishing, it turns out, isn’t so much a second print run (as it seemed at first) as a whole other ecosystem, with a unique atmosphere, strange new rain patterns, and its own troubling signs of pollution and climate change. Diving into it means learning how to breathe all over again.

— Mandy Brown, Three

Further reading: The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane

[…] the question is whether the image of the word-obsessed editor poring over a manuscript, red pen in hand, has given way to that of the whizz-bang entrepreneur attuned to the market’s latest caprice, more at home with a tweet than a metaphor.

— Alex Clark, The lost art of editing

Further reading: Semi-collected thoughts on editing

As more people consume pages in pixels, we wondered why does society still adhere, quite literally, to the analog, page-turning model? What happens when the reading experience catches up with new technologies? What opportunities might arise for authors, publishers, and retailers with major structural changes in the industry?

Have ideas on the future of the book? Join IDEO’s open conversation on Facebook.

via @missjessrose

Can a book text or tweet? Those are just two of the questions asked in IT’S A BOOK, the latest from writer and illustrator Lane Smith.

The story features a book-loving monkey and a tech-savvy donkey whose conversation about Treasure Island pokes fun at the great print vs. digital debate. To add to the humor, the book is being promoted with its own trailer.

Check out Smith’s site and his recent interview with The Wall Street Journal to learn more about how the book came to be.

The book is alive. The book is paper, it’s print, it’s digital, it’s online, it’s on your phone, it’s in your purse, it’s under your pillow. The book is everywhere. The book is changing. What will we design next? We’ll keep designing the book, we’ll keep reinventing what it is, find new ways to read, new ways to write, new ways to publish, new ways to spread information.”

— Ellen Lupton, Thirty Conversations on Design

via @_mkimball

We can try to put a protective layer of glass on the words, or we can embrace the idea that we are all better off when words are allowed to network with each other. What’s the point of going to all this trouble to build machines capable of displaying digital text if we can’t exploit the basic interactivity of that text?”

— Steven Johnson, The Glass Box and the Commonplace Book, a Hearst New Media lecture given at Columbia University

It boggles my mind to think that someone would be so outraged by the written word that they file a challenge to ban it across the nation. And yet there were at least 513 reported challenges on books in 2008 according to the American Library Association. Books aren’t the only target either; magazines like National Geographic and newspapers like the New York Times have been targeted by censors as well.

The problem of censorship does not derive solely from the small anti-intellectual, ultra-moral, or ultra-patriotic groups which will always function in a society that guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The present concern is rather with the frequency and force of attacks by others, often people of good will and the best intentions, some from within the teaching profession.

Source: Guideline on the Students’ Right to Read from the National Council of Teachers of English

Banned Books Week is the national celebration of the freedom to read. This year’s events will run from September 26-October 3. Though I can’t attend any community readings, I can do some celebratory reading of some of my favorite banned authors.

A Short List of Recommended Banned/Challenged Books
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (challenged in 2009)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs (challenged in Howell, Michigan in 2007)
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Choose your own banned reading material from the most challenged list.