E-Books versus Print Books
July 23, 2010
For the past few years there has been a debate amongst authors, publishers and readers about e-books. There are people who say they would never read an e-book, they prefer print.
As a life long reader myself and now a writer I very much understand this. I too was in the “never” camp until I purchased a Sony e-reader.
What I’m finding is I like both my e-reader and print books as delivery systems to access great stories and neither is better than the other, they are just different vehicles for story.
Let’s compare publishing to the changes to the movie industry as they also deliver story to the public. In the early days of the twentieth century movies were silent and usually quite short. This was very cutting edge stuff, but the audience had to read the dialogue on cards on the screen between scenes after the actors would speak. Movies became longer and longer until they were spectacles with incredible sets and costumes, but still they remained silent and audiences still had to read cue cards. The sounds of explosions, galloping horses and gun fire had to all come from the audience’s imagination.
That was until 1929 when a popular singer of the day, Al Jolson sang on film for the first time and the world of movies changed forever. Naturally, at the time many people said sound was a fad and I imagine there were people who said they preferred their movies silent. Can you imagine a movie today without hearing the words, “I’ll be back.”?
After sound changed the film industry there were many technological innovations that followed. Color, Technicolor, cinemascope, surround sound, 3D, digital film, CGI. And no doubt holographic movies are right around the corner.
All of these technical innovations does not change the fact that the story is why the audience buys tickets and why we love movies.
So during all this radical change in the film industry what technological changes were occurring in publishing?
The technological changes in publishing were mostly behind the scenes, invisible to the consumer; improvements to web presses, paper manufacturing, distribution systems, until the internet and the World Wide Web really changed the game.
As we are well aware the internet now permeates our world. It is everywhere. This spurred development of e-readers and buying books on-line, both in print and electronic form.
Today some e-readers are wireless and you can download books from nearly anywhere. When was the last time you were in hotel or coffee shop in North America that didn’t have wireless internet capability?
The e-reader is revolutionizing publishing as sound did to movies in 1929. Where is it headed and what does this all mean for publishers and writers?
Publishers are expanding the electronic availability of their catalogues and a recent report in the New York Times stated that e-books are now outselling hard cover books. This stunning development clearly shows readers have made a choice. Now it’s up to the publishers and writers to adapt.
But what about the providers of the stories, the writers? This explosion of electronic publishing opens up a wide range of options for writers. Authors can now sell their backlist without a publisher themselves on the web. Amazon and others sites have this service available to authors now. In the future I expect this will explode since we are in the infancy of e-marketing. If you want to see an example of e-marketing in action check out mystery author JA Kornth and see what he’s done.
Many authors are selling fiction right off their websites. There are a number of web providers who make this easy and accessible for even the novice Luddite like me.
At some point I can imagine a blending of 3D technology and books. Several years ago on the television show Star Trek Voyager® they depicted the idea of a holographic novel and I believe holo-novels will become a reality.
I’m looking forward to these changes because even if the delivery system changes someone still has to write the story. This is good news for all of us who “scribble” for a living.
UPDATE: an interesting article related to this topic you should read.
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