"On the American reader's need for bright flashing lights ..."

While researching books on internal audit, a new publishing area for us, I came across Joseph Giordano's review of a book. What struck me is how his comments about readers, based, I'm guessing, upon observing his own students, reflects what we've been discussing internally about changing reader habits.

Being a publisher makes this a very important issue. How do we publish detailed technical material in a format that will stimulate purchase and use? Or had the horse left the barn? Maybe the days of a book delivered as a series of tweets isn't so far off, provided Twitter can support multimeda.

From Joseph Giordano:

"I reviewed this book last summer and would love to adapt it into my classes, but I know that my students would NEVER read this. This book is littered with important and insightful tidbits of information. At least 100 times I stopped and said "wow, I never thought of it that way." The fact that I kept falling asleep while reading the book reflects more on the American reader's need for bright flashing lights and inability to process the dry, than the quality of the material. I'm sad that I've become someone who need pictures and graphs and captions and text and even occasional bold type in order to enjoy a well written, well researched tome ... Overall I would call this required reading for auditing instructors, audit nerds, and people who love dry British literature. If he ever comes out with a dumbed down version with end of chapter questions, mini-cases and a test bank then I'm using this book because it is far superior to the competition."