E-Books of Wonder

Fast Company has a fascinating slide show on the evolution of the e-book.

I'm e-lusting after an iPad, but willing to wait on edition 2.0. Still, the scroll idea in the slideshow is astonishing.

As ever, I'm curious how the commercially-driven e-innovations can open opportunities for creative communities (aka literature).

Email. Listservs. Online magazines. Blogs. Social media. E-pads.

Been reading Sina Queyras's Unleashed, a book that emerged from a blog. More on that later. I like it. Among other things, it made me wonder about the difference between the e-book and the blog. The book has a couple "broken links." Words that were hyperlinked on the blog, but that sit flat on the page.

Can the e-book be more organized, coherent, focused than a blog - and also enable the sparks of insight from well chosen hyperlinks? (Hyperlinking, to my mind, is just as potentially brilliant today as it was in 1995, nearly the whole point of the interNET, to my mind.)

I've never read an e-book, in actual fact. The Kindle couldn't interest me less. But the iPad, with its rich media and multiple apps ... yummy.

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RELATED ... I received the following pitch, which I will share here as it is related to the above speculating....

Dear Michael Bryson:

Celebrated novelist Blanche Howard, 87, has released her new novel Dreaming in a Digital World as an original e-book. ....

We hope you will review Blanche Howard’s new novel on your blog and provide a link to it. We can also arrange an interview with the amazing Blanche Howard.

For a free download, click here http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/29176; go to the cart to purchase, then open a free Smashwords account and use the coupon code LZ25D. The e-book is also available for $4.99 at Barnes & Noble, Sony, and Apple e-bookstores. But you can offer the free download to your readers until January 15, 2011.