Presented by Carlo Carrenho in July 2026 at the Scoping Workshop for Mapping Digital Book Cultures in Hannover, this presentation asks whether digital technology has liberated stories from their traditional dependence on books. It organizes this transformation into six major changes in contemporary book culture.
Stories are increasingly streamed rather than purchased, socially discovered rather than privately encountered and heard rather than exclusively read. These changes create new audiences and opportunities while making publishers more dependent on platforms, consumption-based remuneration and rapidly changing discovery mechanisms.
The presentation also considers how stories are generated with artificial intelligence, distributed across global markets and adapted into multiple media. It identifies research questions involving AI-assisted content, translation, narration, publishing employment, cultural diversity, consolidation and the movement of intellectual property across formats.
Carrenho concludes that stories have indeed been released into platforms, communities, audio, AI and global media networks. Nevertheless, books remain their most resilient container: the place where stories are fixed, preserved and archived.
