Barbara Fister at Inside Higher Ed is asking for help with a thought experiment about the future of books. As she says, crowdsourcing requires a crowd, so if you have an interest in the topic, please join the crowd:
This leads me to a thought experiment, and I need your help. I would be grateful for responses from anyone interested in the future of the scholarly monograph….not in the future of writing and publishing scholarly monographs, but in the future of browsing and reading them.
In short, I want to crowdsource some ideas about an ideal future state for the book that is not “commercial” in that it is not going to land on the New York Times bestseller list (99.9999% of books, including those upon which trade publishers pin big hopes and equally large advances) but also in the sense that its prime purpose is not to be purchased by a large enough number of readers to generate profits that will cover its traditional cost, but rathter just to say something worth saying.
info-fetishist 