Prof. Kathi Inman Berens' talk at SHARP 2017, the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing.

1. D
e
l
e
t
e
Apple
iOS
as
a
Book
Distribution
Environment
PROF.
KATHI
INMAN
BERENS
PORTLAND
STATE
UNIVERSITY
BOOK
PUBLISHING
PROGRAM
@KATHIIBERENS

2. A
book
is
interactive
@KATHIIBERENS

3. How
interactive?
How
bookish?
@KATHIIBERENS

4. iPads
are
Bookish
“Bookish”:
an
aesthetic
of
twenty-­‐
first
century
printed
novels
that
“draws
attention
to
the
book
as
a
multimedia
format,
one
informed
by
and
connected
to
digital
technologies.”
Bouchardon
Pressman

5. Berens
(2015):
“Device-­‐Specific
Reception”
•A
digital-­‐first
Reader
Reception
theory.
•Incunabular
days:
ebooks;
e-­‐literature.
Apple’s
transactional
mediation
doesn’t
end
at
point-­‐of-­‐sale.
•Mobile-­‐first
literature
is,
like
videogames,
physical
and
cognitive.
• Flow
states
• Design
for
whole-­‐body,
“proprioceptive”
experience
• Key
differentiator:
attend
to
attentional
states
rather
than
the
container.
@KATHIIBERENS

6. Mobile
“digital”
literature
•Readers
play
it
with
“digits”
=
fingers.
•Navigation
is
expressive
and
socially
embedded.
A
“series
of
interesting
choices”
(Sid
Meier,
1975.)
•Touch
"performs
throughout
the
entire
apparatus/device”:
story,
machine,
code,
human
body
and
the
physical
setting
in
which
the
performance
transpires
(Jerome
Fletcher,
2014)
•Touch
is,
in
mobile
settings,
digital
literature’s
raison
d’être (Serge
Bouchardon,
2016):
a
core
feature
that
can’t
be
removed
from
the
experience
without
the
work
losing
its
meaning.
@KATHIIBERENS

7. Moveable
Books
à Artists
Books
à “Playable
Books”
FIRST
MOVEABLE
BOOK
~
13TH CENTURY
A.C.E.
vTradition
of
readers
wanting
to
“play”
books.
vExpressive
capacities
of
paper
and
other
materials
explored
in
codex
form.
vJohanna
Drucker,
The
Century
of
Artists’
Books
(2004)
considers
playable
books
through
lens
of
twentieth-­‐century
visual
arts.
vKatarzyna Bazarnik,
me,
Susan
Garfinkel:
http://dh2016.adho.org/abstracts/393
vUptick
in
playable
books
printed
by
Big
5
publishers
is
coincident
with
rise
of
literary
apps
and
mobile
games.

8. How
are
iBooks
different
from
iOS
literary
apps?
IBOOK
Content
is
either
“fixed”
or
“reflowable.”
It
has
a
prescribed
beginning,
middle
and
end.
Content
can
be
multimodal;
or
it
can
be
almost
entirely
text.
Most
iBooks
are
conversions
of
print-­‐first
titles,
and
hence
remediate
the
features
of
printed
books.
Generally,
once
in
iBookstore,
remains
in
iBookstore.
APP
Content
is
interactive.
There
is
no
prescribed
beginning,
middle
and
end.
Content
is
certainly
multimodal.
Touch
is
semantic.
That
is,
touch
is
essential
to
how
the
text
makes
meaning.
App
Store
purged
“obsolete”
apps
Sept.
2016.
Announced
Appstore
top-­‐level
redesign
6
June
2017.
@KATHIIBERENS
@KATHIIBERENS

9. Why
make
a
literary
app?
INSTEAD
OF
AN
IBOOK?
•Interactivity
is
essential
to
storytelling
•Total
control
in
authoring
and
versioning
•Unique
design
rather
than
template
•App
“gestural
lexicon”
is
wider:
literary
games,
mobile
game
and
even
productivity
tools
train
a
more
exploratory
form
of
interactivity
than
does
typical
ebook
interactivity.
•Ebook interactivity
=
page-­‐turning
skeumorphic
INSTEAD
OF
PUBLISHING
ON
THE
WEB?
•Can
charge
money
•30%
tithe
to
App
Store
•2012-­‐4
(the
“golden”
2
years
of
iOS
literary
app
development),
independent
artists
explored
the
App
Store
as
a
potential
literary
emporium
with
global
reach.
@KATHIIBERENS
@KATHIIBERENS

10. 18
Cadence
(2013),
an
iOS
app
@KATHIIBERENS
A
century
in
the
life
of
a
small
American
house,
told
in
brief
sentences
and
remixable
words.
$3.99
on
the
Apple
App
Store.
Also
freely
available
on
the
web.

11. Touch
@KATHIIBERENS
As
with
moveable
books,
touch
is
more
than
just
a
means
of
navigation.
Touch
is
expressive
and
exploratory.

12. 18
Cadence
@KATHIIBERENS
“The
story
acquires
an
emotional
resonance.
.
.
.
Surprisingly
affecting.”

13. D
e
l
e
t
e
@KATHIIBERENS

14. The
Big
Purge
@KATHIIBERENS
https://techcrunch.com/201
6/11/15/apples-­‐big-­‐app-­‐
store-­‐purge-­‐is-­‐now-­‐
underway/

15. Fake
Obsolescence
I
cannot
play
18
Cadence via
the
Web
on
my
iPhone
or
iPad
because
the
Flash
animations
won’t
operate
on
iOS.
This
is
an
internecine
war
between
Apple
and
Adobe
that
isn’t
true
of
Androids.
Thus,
I
must
play
18
Cadence
on
desktop.
This
fundamentally
denatures
the
mobile-­‐first
quality
of
the
work.
@KATHIIBERENS
18
Cadence’s
absence
on
my
phone.

16. Obsolescence
Through
Versioning
@KATHIIBERENS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history
My
iPad
is
no
longer
supported

17. “You
need
the
iPad
app
to
play”
@KATHIIBERENS
What
if
books
needed
to
be
updated
–
at
minimum
–
every
two
years?

18. Games
and
Literature?
@KATHIIBERENS
Aaron
A.
Reed
has
been
creating
groundbreaking
interactive
stories
for
over
a
decade.
As
a
young
graduate
student,
he
wrote
a
textbook
for
making
interactive
fiction
using
a
tool
called
Inform
7.
How
are
indie
author/developers
to
make
money?
The
audience
for
interactive
drama
games
can
find
a
huge
range
of
price
points,
from
high-­‐quality
free
work
(in
the
IF
community);
in
Twine;
and
in
interactive
drama
distributed
through
Steam,
Games
of
Choice,
Telltale,
and
others.

19. Why
should
book
publishers
know
about
storytellers
like
Aaron
Reed?
•Indie
storyteller/developers
are
the
untapped
potential
of
digital-­‐first
ebook
design.
•If
mobile
literature
is
imperiled
by
fake
obsolescence,
we
need
to
think
outside
of
established
book
distribution
systems.
•Huge
uptick
in
mobile
gaming
suggests
there’s
a
market
for
interactive
storytelling.
•Indie
author/developers
are
the
jetty
that
breaks
the
gaming
tsunami.
@KATHIIBERENS

20. Mobile
Lit
sold
through
Games
of
Choice,
Steam;
adapted
into
Twine
@KATHIIBERENS
Aaron
Reed
distributed
his
next
work
through
Choice
of
Games
(pictured,
left)
and
Steam– not
Apple.

21. Recommendations
to
Publishers
•Look
to
indie
game
distribution
for
models
of
how
to
make
money
on
longform
story
content.
{With
some
caveats.}
•Think
of
books
as
attention
devices,
not
story
containers.
•Embrace
digital-­‐first
ebook design.
@KATHIIBERENS

22. D
e
l
e
t
e
Apple
iOS
as
a
Book
Distribution
Environment
PROF.
KATHI
INMAN
BERENS
PORTLAND
STATE
UNIVERSITY
BOOK
PUBLISHING
PROGRAM
@KATHIIBERENS
THANK
YOU