…but, I too am partial to the browser. That’s how I’ve chosen to present my own book, The Future History of Travel, in good ‘ole familiar blog format, check it out: http://gotoofareast.com/tfhot.

I think the page turning effect is a nostalgic now, but it may seem archaic later. Sort of how folders are starting to feel obsolete in the age of modular computing.

bowerbird is a troll; stay clear.

It makes me want to test my theories in the real world. Have some guts and put my money where my mouth is.

You must understand – I am interested in what you have to say (my bet too is that we’ll have to have a mobile app for this web fiction thing, parallel to whatever browser-based reading component we have). But I come from a place where I can actually implement the things I’m talking about – I just fire up an editor, and I code out an implementation, and then I run some tests. I’ve been talking about these things for four years now, and I realize that while that has gotten me closer to the truth, it hasn’t gotten me that close. And it’s wasted quite a bit of time.

So while it’s an attractive option to argue with you – I’d much rather go code it out, and see what happens. You could be right, I don’t know. We’ll have to see.

There’s also the fact I’m not sure where you’re coming from. I mean, there’s no link in your name that I can follow – but you sound like a smart guy. Do you have projects you can show us, or that we can talk about? Do you data to back up your claims? Or perhaps some code that’s lying around in a github repository?

Talk is cheap. Hence the we’ll see.

And as for all your other arguments: thank you for taking the time to explain your thoughts. But you’re at Novelr right now. We’ve had 4 years worth of experience in making the book work in a web page. So … we’ll see.

@John: I think the mobile reading environment is served pretty well by the current slew of eReaders, to be honest. What it’s lacking – and a lot of smart people are thinking about this and working on it; see James Bridle’s Open Bookmarks project – is an inability to aggregate the experience, or to give life to the comments and notes in the margins of a book. The current ebook community calls this ‘marginalia’.

@P Dugan: I like saying this, because there’s so little we know: we’ll see. ;-)

Stone tablets –> temple/church walls –> scrolls –> books (novels)… –> browser???

Not really the same thing and begging different forms of writing since each “writing surface” is physically different. I’ve been considering “ebooks” not books at all and especially not novels. They are something else that requires a different form of writing.

Look at Instapaper and like-minded tools. They’re aiming at making the content more visible, and they don’t need page-swiping effects to do so.

Interestingly, Instapaper on an iPhone is pretty much an identical reading experience to Kobo, Kindle, Stanza, etc. At 3.5 inches, you simply can’t have too much container showing.

But you’re absolutely right… the mobile reading environment seems poised for an innovative idea that will take it forward… we haven’t quite seen it yet.