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In my presentation that went viral in SlideShare I present highlights of the “Salon Model”, a concept that aims to decode the social aspect of reading books. My “big idea” is that although we (usually) read books quietly on our own their true value rests in the social dimension of sharing the ideas of that book with friends, family and society at large. In other words, books are in effect discussion fora. Writers, reviewers, anyone participating in any discussion, anywhere, about a book, are mediators of the ideas that books carry, whether they are fiction or not-fiction. In the age where intellectual property rights are increasingly hard to defend or enforce, and digitisation of content leads to shrinking margins for publishers and authors, we must look deeper into the social aspect of reading, understand it, and use it to create new models of experience, as well as new business models, for publishing. The “Salon Model” explores and implements these new models.
