Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
Metamorphosis: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODUyMTE0ODA2MzA3...
The Raven: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTYyMTk5MTcwMTYz...
Alice In Wonderland: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTQ0MTEwMzE5MTg4...
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I find the top comment quite cynical, it’s literally the same as reading text on an ebook or even paperback. IMO once you get engrossed in a story the medium falls away. It’s cool that people are experimenting with a platform in a way maybe not originally intended, but that’s the beauty of it. No one can really foresee all the things you can do with a new platform/technology.
And then expect Zuck and his henchmen, to come up with retarded round about ways to provide the features. "We pay close attention to our cattle. Our new AI based cloud OCR can identify upto 40% of all words on a single page! You can even copy and paste some of them etc etc".
I personally don't like reading books on the Kindle or Phone but do find the bookmarking/lookup/navigation features very useful and of course the ability to store a zillion books. Given all those advantages expect some Facebook exec to start drawing up master plans.
Photocopiers have existed for quite a while.
but, still, I agree that the idiom of the device is made worse in this context.
Other people would put book darts or little sticky notes in their books or dog ear pages where they've highlighted the quotations.
I usually don't have this issue with my ebooks/paperbacks.
Not literally. On an ebook I can add inline notes and then jump to them later (I occasionally do this when a passage sparks an idea). And search text.
The iPad with the Pencil seems promising. If I could underline and scribble notes (that are recognized and indexed) it might be good enough to move me off of Kindle and their great e-ink screens. I have no idea if iBooks does that though.
For some perspective, keep in mind that many famous novels were originally magazine or newspaper installments.[0]
Therefore, reading works like Dumas' "Count of Monte Cristo", Dostoevsky's "Crime & Punishment", or Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" -- in consolidated book form -- is the incorrect method of reading their words. And the correct way to read Charles Dickens is in partial installments to stop at the cliffhanger and then wait a month to resume the story.
Or maybe, the Instagram'ing of novels can be seen as harmless re-serializing of books.
An aside about what "reading" really is...
Some think that listening to the words of a book (e.g. Audible) instead of seeing the words with eyeballs is also not really reading. Does this also mean that blind people are never really "reading" unless their fingers are touching braille?
But the reverse can be true. We're consuming "The Iliad" incorrectly if reading it as a book since it was originally orally transmitted instead of written down.
For some, the physical medium defines what reading is. I don't agree with that but it's clear some really have rigid opinions about how the authors' words are supposed to enter our brains.
EDIT ADD: similar bite-sized reading behavior on smartphones in China explained by a16z Connie Chan. It's not too different from Charles Dickens serializations in the 19th century. Deeplink about China's mobile book economy at 6m25s: https://youtu.be/78pLIj4xeVs?t=6m25s
[0] https://booksonthewall.com/blog/serial-novel-a-brief-history...
Slightly off topic, but since your brought it up, ive just finished the count of monte cristo, and it is the most fantastic and incredible story i have ever heard. Its a story of broken hearts and vengeance like never before nor after. I couldnt believe someone had imagined such an incredible story, and it turns out the book is loosely based of off a true story. Because you couldnt make it up ;p besides, at least in french, it is very well written. Not at all « heavy » to read, it flows very well, it really does not feel like it was written back then.
So if you’ve been looking for a book to read while commuting, i couldnt recommend this one more, enjoy ! ;)
That there are 300k people who are now suddenly "reading" books that have been available in a huge variety of formats in the public domain for years because they show up on Instagram?
Show me the actual usage data. How many of these 300k got past page 3?
The design is nice, the presentation is good, yes, but I doubt very seriously the existence of this hidden, neglected population of bibliophiles.
I can't speak to the 300k number but an increase in readership is plausible because I saw how reducing friction to consume a book can massively change reading habits. E.g. my friend with the new Kindle finally got around to reading the classics like "Madame Bovary" and "Anna Karenina" because she could get ebooks from Amazon for $0.00 (or sometimes a tiny amount like 95 cents).
The previous existence of those public domain books on Gutenberg Project's website was irrelevant since the HTML or TXT files weren't easy to consume unless one printed them out on a printer.
Yes, public domain books have always been sold on Amazon as real paper books but the shipping would end up being $3.99 even for a book costing $0.00.
The Kindle e-reader was the technology to enable her to read public domain books for free with minimum friction. (Even a trip to the public library to check out and later return a physical book for "free" is too much of a hassle.)
I can see how this NYPL project is trying to make a friction-free book reading experience for Instagram users who already own their smartphones. No Kindle purchase necessary. (In my other comment, I mention how millions of Chinese people are reading books on their smartphones.)
You mention a friend who read chose to read "Madame Bovary" and "Anna Karenina" upon discovering a cheap and convenient e-book format. Those books are classics in the Western Canon, yes, but they are also slogs, by some measures.
The other thing that happened, and continues to happen in parallel with the explosion of e-reading tech, is an explosion of other things to (copyrighted) read, written in the modern colloquial, (perhaps more) relevant to modern times. The rise of the tepid, self-published novel on Amazon is the best example of this.
I can believe that there is a latent desire out there for more good books to read or a cool new tech to use to read them, but I doubt very much that very old books in the public domain sate that thirst in any significant way. I think your friend is in the minority.
You are not. Instagram is likely set up to count views of a post, not full reads.
So, people don't have the concentration to read a book anymore. But instead of fixing the cause of this, whatever it is, we mangle them through platforms that weren't designed for it and if there is some success, we claim that people are reading again. Of course they are not. It's a whole different experience. It can be nice and it can add to the experiences that we already knew, but it is definitely not the same as reading a book. It is more like seeing the movie adaptation of the book.
Books have remained the same for centuries. If people are suddenly unable to read them anymore, it is far more likely that it is the people that need "fixing", and not the books.
In full text, in text only form, verbatim
Explain the distinction you are making again and why do you feel it is a productive distinction to make?
What harm? It's a little extra fun that the words are wrapped in some lovely illustrations by a well respected illustrator.
It's not detracting from the novel in the least.
Back then, learning to read at all was nerdy and privileged.
Or people don't really carry books anymore, whereas they always carry their phone, so reading novels there is convenient, and the experiment specifically designed an experience for the platform.
> we claim that people are reading again. Of course they are not. It's a whole different experience.
Of reading novels.
> It is more like seeing the movie adaptation of the book.
In what way is the full novel text "more like seeing the movie adaptation" exactly? It seems odd that you would care solely about the physical format and apparently not even remotely care about the contents.
> Books have remained the same for centuries.
Except for all the times people were not reading books e.g. many 19th century classics were initially serialised in newspapers, consumed as bite-sized chapters before being collected into volumes.
> If people are suddenly unable to read them anymore, it is far more likely that it is the people that need "fixing", and not the books.
Good luck with that. Meanwhile other people care more about the works than the format and are, as the article notes,
> happy to meet people where they are
The general critique about people reading fewer books is probably true. In my case it is just time constrains. Belletristic works are something I only read while travelling (which I do perhaps 1-2 times a year).
But yeah, Instagram wouldn't be my first choice, but I never tried it on the other hand.
I don't think your comparison to a movie adaption works at all. It is very much like reading the book - you consume the same text. The difference is maybe the 'distracting' animated illustrations, and the tendency to read in very small pieces, rather than settle down to reading chapters at a time. The last point speaks to your concentration comment, though not sure it's definitely a bad thing, certainly better than not reading at all.
Last year my then-kindergartener's "reading time" at school turned out largely to be having the school iPad read to her. She got worse at reading for months before we realized what was going on and how much work we'd have to do at home to undo the damage the school was inflicting. If you give them the option plus little supervision of course they'll take the easy way. Ugh.
This really sounds like you just don't like it because it's not how you would like the reading experience to be. Are you open to the idea that someone can have a meaningful reading experience that's wildly different to yours?
The site details out the motivation behind the project, provides a list of novels released and to come. It is also loaded with eye candy from the gorgeous animation and design examples.
Not to turn the subject to IP but I think this is a wonderful example of what can be done with the public domain:
>Each book so far in the Insta Novels Collection has come from the public domain.
Even if it was cellular...
(I purposely ignore the processing power required at the other end to serve you the images ;-)
I think its useful as a thought exercise and idea for profiles but nothing more. Its not useful for NYPL to increase its physical engagement, and thats fine. Kinda a fun reason to use instagram though, see what a profile is up to.
Sidenote: I’ve inadvertently joined book clubs just because a meme account started shilling a book and then started posting memes about the book
This is answered in the article:
"The project, known as Insta Novels, is part of the NYPL’s goal to reach beyond its walls and convince more people to read books."
There's no basis in that assumption. In fact, I'd argue that it's possible that this format (interspersed with graphics and with a user base tuned to ingest content in a certain way) may actually aid retention and understanding. Instagram users have gotten very good at quickly gleaning information from the format. There's a huge userbase and they are not likely carrying around a physical book or eReader. This book format is essentially on them at all times and takes advantage of the potential to "hook" a user at an opportune moment.
Instagram users aren't expected to "drop their habits". Their habit is one of consumption - this just fits into that habit.
Literary snobs today imagine a past world where everybody was constantly discussing the finer points of the classic masterpieces every day of their lives. In reality only about 12% of the global population in 1820 was literate. And that's just baseline, not to speak of people who actually spent time reading difficult, thoughtful, full-length books.
Thoreau has a great passage in Walden (published in the 1850s) where he complains about people knowing how to read, yet spending their time reading garbage romance novels instead of classics like the Iliad. I think the complaint of people "reading books" on Instagram comes from the exact same place. It's a timeless problem, which is not really a problem.
Even when global literacy reaches 100%, there will still be a very small percentage of people who are hardcore readers. There is a certain kind of person who will sit down with a big heavy paper book and read it cover to cover, and they are not a common species among humans. It's something you are born with, or something that you gain in very early childhood anyway, and nothing Instagram does will ever change that.
So there's really no use in complaining about it one way or the other. Instagrammers will instagram. Some of them will read real books too, and others will not.
This just shows the enormity of the Instagram user-base. A tiny fraction of niche users on Instagram can add up to a massive market...
Here's a demo video => https://youtu.be/u1k1JZtDzuU
This is actually... kinda useless.
suggest that Wikipedia would be better if it's physics articles had interactive simulations or that stack overflow's failed docs initiative should make room for working examples and get downvoted into oblivion
I think you missed a vital reason and that is portability and sharability. No one needs to install anything special to read or edit a text file.
It's the digital equivalent of paper and pen when you think about it and that makes it a popular platform for everyone to be able to consume it.
Plus, back when we were all old and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the text file was the lightest/smallest way to transfer data (read: ideas) between computers.
The practice/behaviour saturated the industry so much that many readmes of today are still on text files.
Maybe there's a correlation to the real world, where we're definitely more apt to consume mediums that don't have superfluous data points than the words/ideas that they're meant to convey? Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass?
Either way, plain-text resources are the easiest to create, share, and consume because there's almost a universality in the standard for text files (except the EOL and CRLF but that's more of an inconvenience than anything).
Techies like plaintext because it's free of superfluous bullshit. It's efficient. It's flexible.
As for interactive simulations, I'm all for them. I love the work of Bret Victor, or Nicky Case, or other stuff in the category of "explorable explanations". Those people do it well. But if it's not executed well, it's worse than not being done at all.