“People are feeling quite hopeful about what can happen with digital books,” Henry said in an interview.

“It could possibly be even a renaissance for writers and publishers as opposed to a doomsday scenario.”

Henry’s comments were echoed by Andrew Piper (the McGill academic, not the author of The Killing Circle, who spells his name with a “y”), who suggested that e-readers will not eliminate books but will change our relationship with them. No longer will the page be the “primary interface” by which readers encounter ideas. Even the notion of how we process ideas is open to revision, according to Piper:

“When you begin to think of the world not in a linear sequence of cause and effect but as a series of associated non-hierarchical ideas … there’s a value encoded in that,” says Piper.

“All ideas become equal. There’s no inherent structure to ideas.”

The notion that all ideas are equal (that Schopenhauer’s thought is equivalent to that of, say, Ann Coulter) gives Quillblog a feeling of extreme horripilation, as does Henry’s notion that “every single e-book automatically becomes postmodern just by virtue of it being digital.” Of course, given that writers were experimenting with recombinant literary forms well before the digital era, the “huge shift” that Henry identifies may not be all that huge, after all.

THIS POST CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT HAS BEEN UPDATED: The quotes in the final paragraph of this post were erroneously attributed to Andrew Piper. They should have been attributed to Lynn Henry. Quillblog regrets the error.

“I look forward to working with what I know will be a crack team,” said Little in a press release.

Meanwhile, former managing editor Janie Yoon has been promoted to senior editor of non-fiction, and former editorial assistant Kelly Joseph has been promoted to assistant editor.

Look for further coverage in Q&Q Omni next week.

Henry became Anansi’s publisher in 2005, after a stint as editor for Raincoast Books’ now-defunct publishing program.

Watch Q&Q Omni for more coverage.