Martyn Daniels asks in his blog Brave New World, So What Is Social Reading? “... (social reading) is somewhat of a challenge to understand and some would suggest nonsensical because of the multiple interpretations that can be applied.”When I was much younger, reading was, indeed, a social activity, as much as music was. We didn’t read aloud to one another, but we shared books (just as we shared records.) “This is very good,” was all the recommendation that was required. The challenge was to find new books, new authors, and new genres, before your friends. Now that I run a bookshop, reading remains a social activity: we recommend books to our customers, and they suggest books to us.
I Googled the term and got 208,000 hits, though not all relevant. This story caught my eye: “Goodreads has opened its API that will give partners free access to the book lovers' social network and the book reviews, meta data, and literary discussions ... Developers using the API can pull Goodreads ratings for over 2 million different titles and reviews for over 500,000 titles. Goodreads has more than 4 million members and more than 110 million books cataloged. While other online stores may offer customer book reviews, Goodreads members are (not surprisingly) active with their review contributions,” said the ReadWrite Hack.
Digital Book World said, “Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, according to the latest Nielsen research, and the most conservative estimates predict eBooks will represent at least 10% of book sales by the end of the year,” which does raise questions about the average American’s time management (or boredom), and the rather optimistic (or wishful) ebook sales forecast. (After 10 years, digital music downloads account for only 10%).
As Enhanced Ebook University website says, “Books are social. It’s rare to meet someone who reads and doesn’t care to tell anyone what he’s read.”
Since we are such suckers for buzz words, expect to hear the term more often.
Goodreads
Brave New World
Digital Book World
Enhanced Ebook University
