The Future Of The Ebook Isn’t PDF

There are a lot of pages in Knock Knock (I finally downloaded it as I wrote this so I could check) – could I just print it off? I don’t have a printer at home, I don’t use a printer at work because I never have to these days. If I did print it, I’m sure I’d leave it on the printer until the guy from Accounts finally recycles it.

We’re in an age of links, trackbacks, dynamic updatable content – and the PDF is quite frankly a dinosaur. There’s no point making a book an ebook if you don’t make the content accessible. Many traditional books are in a poor format for our modern lifestyle – I have several business books at home half read, getting dusty. However, two books that I read in a flash recently was Tom Peter’s Trends and Robyn Waters’ Trendmaster books. Why? They were booklets – short, concise, could fit in my pocket so I could read anywhere, anytime on my ever-changing schedule (and I could take my eyes away from the screen for once).

OK, ok. So maybe you think I live some freak lifestyle – if it is then ask yourself – is it very different from your work-style in your next job?

When I emailed back and forth with James Torio of Blog Thesis fame yesterday we talked about the PDF format of his thesis. “I’m not a big fan on PDF,” he told me and so I suggested that he republish the thesis in blog format – blogs are not only far more digestible, instant – James can release his thesis page by page over time and append in real time content that relates to what he has written or even update examples. And so can others through comments.

James ebook becomes alive through the blog format. And people like me read it and talk about it because of its content, not because of its author.