I’ve been a book collector since the age of six.  To my delight/dismay I own somewhere north of 8,000 books.  Many are what one might call “rare;” others are long out of print; some are in large collections, such as the 300+ books on Japanese woodblock prints.  The obvious problem with so many books is that I have no place to keep them.  My apartment can’t hold even one more (well, maybe one more.)  My storage room in the basement is full of book boxes. Eighty cartons are in a storage facility in New York.  Clearly, this is too many books.

I bought a Kindle.  Except for a few business books that  date quickly and require only one reading, the experience is less than satisfactory.  I miss the physicality of a real book.  I love paper, and type, and book design–even with a paperback.  Vintage Penguin paperbacks are treasures.  The presentation on a Kindle is just another way to give the reader a page, albeit an electronic one.  It’s economical and saves space, but for me it’s a poor substitute.  My Kindle lives in a desk drawer.

I’ve recently been introduced to Inkling– http://www.inkling.com –the interactive text books for iPad publishers.  What I like about Inkling, and interactive books in general, is that they aren’t books.  Interactive books don’t try to be books.  There are no pages.  You don’t have to follow a linear format.  They are experiential, defined by the reader, not the publisher.  While they are not the bound book I love as well, they are a new and different way to “read” content.  It’s like going from a slide show to a movie.

Does this spell the end of books?  I don’t think so, at least no more so than the decline in reading, the proliferation of books not worth reading or the reduction of literature in high school English classes (which I guarantee will soon be renamed something like “Content Consumption,” certainly not “Literacy Skills.” When was grammar last taught?)

Interactive books might save many traditional books from disappearing.  Inkling’s text book publishing, available for download on an iPad, may be just such an example.  Everyone knows that textbooks are a kind of scam, a way for teachers and professors to earn more money by annually revising their work and then requiring students to buy the latest high-priced editions.  One can’t blame the authors, who need to supplement their meager teaching incomes in more legitimate ways than becoming house painters for the summer–a solution to which one Ivy League professor I know resorts to support his family.  Students, and parents of students, already bulk at this scheme which accounts for the rise of textbook rentals, used textbooks (usually earlier editions, which rarely make any difference in most fields) and the abandonment of textbooks all together in favor of free online source material.

Interactive books provide a different, often more compelling, learning experience.  Inkling’s textbooks are one approach.  Others are children’s “books” that open to a world of wonder; art and design books; instructional manuals.  Imagine what interactivity could do for manga?  Of how it could open up new possibilities for  dyslexic readers.

I’m working this week in Boston out of the offices of my friend Bruce Shaw’s Harvard Common Press, one of the country’s leading cook book and childcare publishing companies.  Bruce and his associate publisher Adam Salomone are constantly exploring the future of book publishing, specifically HCP’s specialties.  Where are cookbooks going?  Who will want another traditional cookbook?   Many are purchased; few are used.  Bruce and Adam are heavily involved in the food blogging world; they experiment with Kindle editions; they attend digital conferences.  They are involved with a Silicon Valley recipe start-up called Yummly, now the 5th most frequently clicked food site on the web.  Interactive cookbooks are the next evolution.  It would be like bringing the Iron Chef’s actual studio–not the flat TV screen–into your kitchen.  The last thing cookbooks need are sequential pages. The social features Inkling offers–the opportunity to communicate in real time with friends–would be a marvel in the kitchen.  Interactivity will revolutionize cookbook publishing.  It may also save it.

Taking this one step further, what if Yummly had its own iPad app that instead of serving its subscribers weekly recipes based on their individual taste preferences, it took those same subscribers into a virtual kitchen experience where via an interactive platform the cook and the screen became one seamless experience.  No more trips to a Tuscan cooking school. It would be in your kitchen.

Interactivity in the publishing world is at its beginning.  It’s future is bright–even dazzling.