BookNet Canada’s next Code Meet Print is coming up fast. On November 23 we look at the brave frontier of …reading!
This CMPTO session, called Reading Is Social, is timely as we move into the season that everyone in the book industry is pumped for—the holidays! Are people still going to buy that someone special a dead tree copy of that great non-fiction title or are they thinking about how they can really show they care by getting involved in the latest greatest trends in e-reading? How are they going to decide what to pick up for their Secret Santa exchange? Many hands make light work, so will they take the task of shopping for stories to the world wide web at Goodreads, Facebook, or Twitter?
Questions like these made us wonder: How is the book industry leveraging game mechanics, crowdsourcing and social platforms to make reading even more attractive?
For myself, reading has always been a social activity. After reading a book, I want to talk about it and share it with friends and family. There is something contagious in the act of sharing a good book. And something proactive in dissing a bad one. With the advance of the digital book, it isn’t surprising that the act of reading is being rethought.
When you hear about social platforms or game mechanics integrating with reading you might cringe, arguing that reading is a private affair, done in solitude at a quiet library, in a den, far from the madding crowd. But that just isn’t so. There are and have been for some time, public readings, communal storytelling, notes in text and more.
Our next Code Meet Print meetup will give Tim Maly of QuietBabylon.com, Tony O’Donoghue from Kobo, and Erin Balser from CBC Books an opportunity to share with us their philosophy around crowd sourcing and engagement with the reading class. Hope to see you there!
When: November 23 2011 @ 6 pm (presentations @ 7 pm)
What: #CMPTO Reading is Social: Presented by BookNet Canada
Where: No One Writes the Colonel
Interested in this or future CMPTO meetups? Join the CMPTO meetup group and let us know you’re going! You can also follow us on twitter @cmp_to or follow the conversation with the #CMPTO hashtag.
