In our advocacy of digital media we often say that one of the great benefits of digital text is that the book becomes a living object, that readers can respond with comments, authors can interact with readers, and togetehr the resulting dialogue will be richer than the stale pages of a printed book. That’s a lovely concept.

But what if the author doesn’t want to engage in a dialogue with readers? Of course, no one will force anyone to do so. I suspect that when a lot of authors finish writing a book, then they’re finish with that topic. They want to move on to something else, research another subject. They may be sick to death and be repulsed by having to moderate comments.

Yet, we all know that most scholarly books are never read. I’m a librarian and I’ve seen those circulation statistics. So, why would the number of readers of networked books be any higher? These online books are now novelties and attract a lot of attention but that always will not be the case. Sure, there will be some Internet trolls but when thousands of networked books appear every year, then the readership for each work is likely to be low and manageable. Authors may be thrilled to learn that there is actually someone reading their writings.

Still, I suspect that some authors will not want to take part in a dialogue about their networked book. In that case, can it still be called a networked book if the author doesn’t participate in the discussion? How do readers respond to a networked book if the author is not responsive? Do the readers then view that specific networked book with less validity? Or, does the networked book then take on a life of its own, fostering a new community that is interlinked with other networked books and researchers exploring the same field of study? What happens to a networked book when the author dies?

Undoubtedly, as with printed books, the dialogue resulting from the networked book will go on long after the author’s involvement, either from lack of interest or physical incapacity.

I also suspect that there will be some authors who will get so carried away with the ongoing discourse surrounding a networked book that they never get around to completing another. (Will some futuristic tenure committee set quotas to prod junior faculty into producing a greater number of networked books?) Or, can one’s lifetime of research be embodied in an ever changing, evolving networked structure that has no analogy to books?

For some authors there may be a point where a particular networked book becomes so popular that an author may have to step away from the dialogue in order to pursue other research. In those cases, will the networked book site be closed to comments and considered complete or will the site continue growing without the participation of the original author? Perhaps there are opportunities for graduate assistants to take over the moderation of the dialogue.