Bookp versus Bookc

Consider these two statements:

• I wrote a book.
• The book I wrote is on my shelf.

Book does not mean the same things here, and increasingly I feel that this ambiguity causes problems. Technological changes are causing the meanings to drift further apart, so I think it's important to clarify the two meanings that book can have.

I'll call the meanings book_p and book_c. A book_p is a physical object. It consists of pages of paper with ink on them. The pages are bound together and held between two covers. Book_ps are what bookstores and libraries are filled with.

A book_c is not a physical object. The c stands for content, and if we assume that the content of a book is a simple stream of text (which is essentially true for most novels), book_c is that stream of text. The text might get printed on pages that are bound together, thus yielding a book_p, but the text might also get spoken aloud and recorded as an audiobook. It might get distributed over a set of web pages, thus forming a web site. The content of a book is independent of its packaging, and in fact packaging is what the p in book_p stands for. A book_p is simply one of many different ways of packaging a book_c.

Authors don't generally write book_ps, although I suppose those who self-publish and keep boxes of books in their garage do. Rather, authors write book_cs. The semantics of the statements above, then, can be depicted this way:

• I wrote a book_c.
• The book_p I wrote is on my shelf.

With this distinction in mind, consider Doug McCune's statement that he doesn't read books or Joel Spolsky's thesis that programmers seem to have stopped reading books (both of which I found out about thanks to Jeff Atwood's blog.) I think these statements refer to book_ps, not book_cs, and that opens the door to the possibility that people who claim to not read books or people who appear to not read books actually do read them, they just don't read them in book_p form.

Like Mulder, I want to believe, because I happen to like writing books (i.e., book_cs). Other entries in this blog make clear that I think a lot about book_ps, but that's simple pragmatics. The publishing industry is changing, but it's currently set up to produce, market, distribute, and sell books in printed form. Remaining mindful of authoring constraints arising from printing considerations is no different from remaining mindful of software constraints arising from Windows considerations (assuming, in both cases, you want to maximize the number of platforms on which you can deliver what you produce).

Authors who leave all the layout decisions to their publishers (i.e., most of them) worry only about book_c considerations. Authors such as me who can't keep themselves from delving into layout matters have to keep book_p issues in mind, but it doesn't change the fact that, fundamentally, writing a book means writing a book_c.