It's time to face it, print books are going the way of vinyl records, 8-track tapes and bulky VHS cartridges. I can hear the groan as I write this. I'm not saying I agree or think it's a good thing. I love the look, texture and smell of a freshly bound book. I like to handle them, gaze at them on my shelves and yes, read them. But, I can see the writing on the LCD. Smaller, hand-held devices and digi text is what the current generation is accustomed to. HG Wells saw this in his Time Machine novel over 100 years ago. Books would become relics and turn to dust. Who can manage so much paper and volume? Not future generations. A mobile society will not haul boxes of books around when a 500 gig SATA drive costs under $100 and can easily hold an entire public library (7.5 million volumes could be stored in .zip format in 2.6 terabytes.) Your average 4-gig thumb drive can hold the text of 10,000 books. (source: Project Gutenberg) 30,000 books could be stored in 12 gigabytes, and we'll see 12 gig flash drives this year! You could carry around every word in 30,000 books in less space and weight than your average wristwatch.
Online data has already completely revolutionized research. I didn't have to make a physical trip to California to get information I need for my novel. I could take a virtual trip with Google Earth, view 3D renderings of the buildings, use panoramic photography to see interiors, and of course all information in the world is somewhere within Google's grasp.
This morning I saw a TV segment (CBS Sunday Morning) on cell phone novels. Huh? Kids in Japan are writing novels on their cell phones and uploading them to the internet. One woman has sold 800,000 copies and made over $8 million doing this. It's clearly time to completely reconsider what "publishing" means. I thought of this years ago when I told my friend JC that I envisioned some multi-dimensional novel with more than one ending. But, that time is NOW!
I'm looking at the 2008 Writer's Digest Yearbook and Harper Collins is publishing to iPhone now. Sales of e-books have tripled from 2006 to now (according to WD.) Podcasting and Audible by- pass print media altogether for those who want to listen, rather than view text. I don't have an answer here, but I sure have a lot more questions. I may jump into the e-frey with my novel. I was thinking POD anyway (print on demand.) hmmmmm.
7 comments:
i've been resisting the e-book trend so far. i don't like reading on a screen, it bothers my eyes, whereas reading an actual physical book does NOT bother my eyes. never mind the orwellian risk of subconscious e-messages streaming into your orbs, lol ;)
but now with amazon's kindle, and everyone talking that up big time, i can see that this is the wave of the future, or of the now, actually. however, i will resist until the last dusty paper book is plied from my dead bony fingers!!!
viva the printing press!!!!!
mo
Great article, ej!
I think sg texted enough while she was here visiting to constitute an e-novel.
The newer storage devices like thumb drives are great, but cuddling up with a good e-book just isn't the same.
Kay
Ah, shoot.
I'll miss the smell of the new paper, the flick of a page turning, or the thump as I put it down. I guess the thing of it is that printed books are of this world, where e-books exist somewhere else...
On the other hand, existing somewhere else makes them impossible to burn or even ban...
Given the right push, you could even end up with a more literate generation that expects all info to be available here and now.
My biggest fear is that it will be available now, but only free if you accept the 'sponsored' version. Even worse, we could end up with sponsor altered text like we have now sponsor 'placement' in movies - Coke pays for Nicolas Cage to drink their product, Chevy for him to drive the new Camaro... Imagine sponsor driven content where in New Mexico the heroine opens the fridge to get Creamland milk, where in MN they read it as Land O'Lakes...
RO
i like books that you can talk back to... so blogs are okay.
i also like books that come in short fragments. no. it's not ADD it's a thirst for a little of everything... so i don't like being tied to a book or a movie for longer than 240 seconds.
-polvo the 240 second man
The concept of e-publishing is a great one and appears to be recreating the music industry the fastest. Remember in Star Trek: NG, they had e-tablets? I find reading on this screen a little tedious but if I could read in bed where the image was displayed onthe wall or the ceiling in large print it could be great. It seems it would really empower the "average jane" to have access to the world with her book with out having to pay a book maker to create the product...
I am still waiting for the neural shunt to be installed at birth giving all humans a direct link to the net with no hardware needed. of course the possibilities of mind control and knowing what you are doing but what you are accessing on the net through your .link is daunting.
-- virtual dan 9:42 pm (you post, please.)
I went to Amazon.com the other daty to get cover art for an album I ripped (somehow this seems easier than scanning it, but ...). Anyway, they had a video about Kindles. The disclaimer that demand has outstripped supply and wanting to try my new comcast high speed, I watched. Looks very cool. The display looks much better than I imagined and they added some neat features - built in dictionary, full text search of anything you've paid for (they even list at amazon, so if you need to get it again...). Plus, the books are cheaper and you can get newspaper (not LA Times) and magazine subscriptions that auto download themselves every new edition...
They seem pretty pricy, but on the other hand if I by 10-15 full price books when they first come out, I'd end up spending the $400 - but minus the cost of the Kindle book puts the 'break even/ROI' time not too far out. Say two years??
I should probably buy a couch first, though...
For the data entry i searched many companies. Finaly i found the data conversion
india
right place. They saved my money and time.
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