Writing, Self-Publishing, Book Marketing

The Evolution of the Book: E-Ink Technology Activating Content & Cover Images

July 29, 2008 at 9:35 am jdimos Leave a comment

Inserting typeset letters into a printing press only a few decades ago, who would have dreamed that the simple book would have evolved into devices like Amazon.com’s Kindle and now, with the coming publication of Esquire’s magazine cover equipped with E Ink technology, pages with active content and images that come to life?

If you’ve been reading about the future of print in the past few weeks, you’ve certainly come across the buzz around this new book technology. Can you imagine – tomorrow the images that grace the covers of our books will change, flash and even animate?

So this September, look out for the new issue of Esquire. Because the technology is still quite expensive, only 100,000 of the total 720,000 print run will be assembled by hand before hitting newsstands. Who knows where the E Ink covers will end up? Ironically, this blogger can’t help feeling a little like Charlie from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, searching for the golden ticket.

But should you notice any shifting images jumping out at you from a magazine in the coming months, you might want to snatch a copy before all of them wind up with collectors or housed in the Smithsonian.

Advocating the importance of “electronic print” for more than 11 years, E Ink has recently become popularized by producing the display technology for Amazon.com’s Kindle. Today, with the tiniest of batteries woven into the fabric of a book or magazine, their staff can create pages and covers that rotate, update and even change completely.

Each year, a new technological advance leads to a better engineered book and product package for authors. And I thought the development of print-on-demand technology that saved on paper, virtual inventories that saved space and book trailers that animated scenes from books on the Interest were exciting enough.

But there’s no end! There’s more coming!

We’re entering a whole new era of communication and technology, which will change the very trajectory of the book itself. Picture a newspaper that’s a simple plastic sheet constantly refreshed with new information. Imagine books downloaded instantaneous to your advanced Kindle machine in a wireless Internet café.

Hopefully, in the next few years, as the technology becomes affordable and widespread, more and more authors and editors with experiment with E Ink’s technology and the evolution of the book. And who knows?  A few years from now, you may even see Wordclay offering E-Covers in our Services Store.

This is Justin, blogcasting from Wordclay, signing off.

Entry filed under: In the News, Publishing. Tags: active, content, cover, E-Ink, electronic print, Esquire, Kindle, magazine, print-on-demand, Technology, Wordclay.