File:Expub Exploring Expanded Publishing 2025.pdf

"We publish more yet read less. We skim through titles and headlines, scroll through stories and speak 140 characters at a time. Yet we also print, on-demand or in bulk, we decorate coffee tables, collect, beach read, we publish ourselves reading.

With the advent of personal computers and the internet in the 1990s, the promise of a rich multimedia reading experience was born. A world of possibilities opened: moving images in books, 3D reading environments, interactive storytelling, and many more innovations seemed to be within reach. But three decades later, we still read scanned PDFs from the traditional book. Publishing houses focus exclusively on print and occasional ePubs, and big tech platforms monopolise distribution. In the meantime, the market is getting more challenging as the attention economy reshapes readership and literacy, and Generative Artificial Intelligence is starting to occupy the positions of writers and editors. Where did the promised boom of multimedia books — and, with it, the advent of a new reading culture — go wrong? And most importantly, how do we deal with the fragmented environment we are publishing ourselves into?

Expanded publishing encompasses a set of practices, tools, workflows, business models, and approaches to editorial objects. It is not only a way of doing but also a way of seeing. It involves seeing the book as an expandable object — transcending the traditional linear conception of it, whether in print or as text on a screen. It also entails seeing the environment and culture in which the book exists as a space to inhabit with its content, expanding the editorial and curatorial processes at every stage: writing, production, distribution, promotion, fruition, reading, and collecting."

 Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, with Aksioma, Nero Editions, and Echo Chamber, 2025
 Publication concept and editing: Carolina Valente Pinto and Marta Ceccarelli
 License: Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 Unported
 229 pages
 Website
 PDF

Book launch.