The recent release of Barnes & Noble’s nook – a revolutionary advancement in eBook readers – has got me thinking once again about the future of publishing. Dylan said it best: “the times they are a-changin'.”
Just go back a few decades to the Dark Ages... In the 1980’s, before most people had access to cable television and/or the Internet, the populace received a substantial amount of their information (and entertainment) via newspapers and magazines. Trouble was, by the time a newspaper hit your doorstep or a magazine arrived in the mail, much of the content was already old. And the cost of it all! Employing all of those writers, editors, production people, printers, etc. let alone the shipping or delivery fees! And as a bookstore manager for eight years back during those Dark Days, it always amazed me the unbelievable wastefulness in the way brick-and-mortar bookstores operated – new books get shipped in by the truckload, books that don’t sell get shipped back out by the truckload. Virtual mountains of paperbacks and magazines that don’t sell get stripped and thrown into the dumpster. (Somewhere the Lorax is going postal.) There had to be a more economical way….
The Internet changed all of that though – now we can literally watch news as it unfolds, be it war footage in Iraq or a video of Britney Spears getting out of a limo sans panties. It’s more time efficient and more cost efficient. There’s really no excuse to wait for anything now – we can access tens of thousands of book titles in just seconds with the nook! – and that’s just the beginning of this unfolding technological revolution.
A perfect example of this is the increasing amount of online publishing sites that are featuring original works of speculative fiction. Some are free (powered by advertising) while others are subscription based. And more and more of these sites are churning out truly exceptional work. Many science fiction fans remember Sci Fiction – which ran from 2000 to 2005 – an online magazine that published an impressive amount of critically acclaimed stories (Linda Nagata’s novella Goddesses won the Nebula Award in 2000, Jeffrey Ford’s novelette “The Empire of Ice Cream” won the Nebula Award in 2003, etc.). But the site, which was owned by the Sci Fi Channel, sadly shut down in 2005 because it wasn’t generating enough revenue. The business model for a viable online publishing site, however, has been slowly evolving and today there are dozens of sites publishing original and high quality work – Clarkesworld Magazine (www.clarkesworldmagazine.com), Baen’s Universe (www.baen’s-universe.com), and Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show (www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com), to name just a few. Why wait months or years for a print anthology to be published when you can access hundreds of short stories online?
This truly is an exciting time to be alive, especially if you’re a hardcore genre fiction reader like me. Technology is changing the way we live – and read – so quickly that I can barely keep up with it all. Just imagine the world a few decades from now: will there be dramatically fewer brick-and-mortar bookstores? Will Barnes & Noble’s nook be as commonplace as iPods? Will our future be one largely without books? Will online publishing eventually replace print publishing? Will eBook readers and the Internet be all we need for our news and entertainment?
Just ask the Lorax – I’ll bet you he has already has a nook. You can text him on his iPhone3GS if you don’t believe me…
Hi Paul!
My goodness when that Nook came out, I could almost feel the noose getting a little tighter in regards to how long real books will be around! The kind you hold in your hand, place bookmarks in, love that new smell and the shiny new bookcovers. An electronic device can't replace that! I truly hope it doesn't come down to where there are no more hand held books. I'm not ready at all! Even though I've downloaded samples of e-books, it's only been because I've been so curious about a book or some books that I wanted by favorite authors and couldn't wait for them to come out.
More than once, there's been a little niggle in the back of my mind that has nudged me on to buy the e-book, but I've resisted everytime. I don't want to constantly look at a computer screen. If I want to read for several hours, I don't like the idea of turning the pages with just the flick of a button. It just seemed so impersonal when I was reading my e-sample. I couldn't feel the texture of the paper in my hand, There was no smudged pages if I was eating my favorite cookie while reading. No creased page to mark my spot, if I couldn't find the right bookmark that I wanted to put in the book. No favorite passages highlighted to remember when I'd read the book again. Yes, I'm that picky! Of course, I know they've thought of how to mark those passages too! It just wouldn't be the same!
I only recently got a computer. It wasn't because I didn't want one, but because the old budget and I couldn't afford it. I'm afraid the new e-reader will have to take a back seat just as the computer did for awhile. Technology is running faster than I can keep up! At least I knew how to work the computer, learning how to do that at work. I'm still learning all of the things it can do. Admittedly, it is an amazing tool and lots of fun. However, as long as I can get my hands on those glorious, beautiful bound tomes ... literally, I'm happy indeed! Very, very happy!!! 
