Global & beta English version

The number of representatives of digital publishing that Berlin has attracted in recent years is astonishing. Their lingua franca is a code that can be understood anywhere you go and is used across the world: the e-book code. As part of the Stadtsprachen Festival, taking place in Berlin in November 2016 and funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, this reader takes a look at what it is that constitutes this international digital voice. Also available in German.

Four Berlin-based publisher-authors (Kathrin Passig of Techniktagebuch and others, Nikola Richter of mikrotext, Ansgar Warner of ebooknews, and Christiane Frohmann of Frohmann) share and discuss opinions, experiences, and challenges. In addition, four Berlin-based writers to think about their literary relationship with the internet. Assaf Alassaf, a Syrian writer, describes the dilemma created by, on the one hand, the ability to write freely on Facebook in the Arab world and, on the other, the desire to sell one's best ideas to the traditional media. Asal Dardan—Iranian-born, Berlin-raised, living in Sweden—considers the international possibilities of the e-book. The internet poet Alan Mills from Guatemala, who lives in Berlin and Vienna, observes Facebook posts with Kafka's eyes. In her associative-philosophical contribution, Chloe Zeegen, a German-English writer who also lives in Berlin, compares the messianic promises of the internet with promises of salvation found in the Bible.