![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Today's installation of Chain Mail - conversations with Book View Cafe authors -- tackles the question of electronic publishing and the future of books. Here's my answer:
I’ve long since given up making predictions. Most of the time, I have no clue why one book sells and another doesn’t (well, okay, I have lots of clues as to why some books don’t sell). But here’s what I believe:
People will always want good stories. They’ll want to hear ’em, read ’em, see ’em (theater, films, etc.). They’ll want to act them out. We are a story-telling species. The medium is far, far less important than the story. Flexibility/adaptability/range are the keys to surviving uncertain times.
Paper books have been around for a long time, and still offer strengths that other media don’t. Durability is one, as we have no electronic storage medium that rivals the centuries that acid-free paper lasts. Books offer physical pleasures that ereaders don’t (at least, so far) and (getting wilder here) people who grew up with books are less likely to completely discard them than people who grew up with computers. So we have overlapping generations of book-pref and computer/edevice-pref.
We’re definitely in a shakedown period of electronic publishing. Some of what’s going by the wayside should stay there, but often, good stuff risks becoming lost as well. It will take a while for new systems to emerge, and for errors to correct themselves.
One of the greatest potentials for epublishing is the rebirth of the midlist. This is where the most imaginative, risk-taking writing lives. These books challenged readers, to be savored over and over. Once upon a time, read-it-once best-sellers subsidized the midlist, to everyone’s benefit. Then came the era of bean-counters, where every book was supposed to be a best-seller, so away went these precious but not wildly successful books. Now, most of them did make money. Just not enough. Enough, though, to support an author if the right audiences could be reached. This is where I am hoping electronic publishing will shine, by providing a framework for works that do not pander to the lowest-common-denominator audiences, and by using the power of electronic communications to connect these books with their audiences.
At least, that’s what I hope will happen.
I’ve long since given up making predictions. Most of the time, I have no clue why one book sells and another doesn’t (well, okay, I have lots of clues as to why some books don’t sell). But here’s what I believe:
People will always want good stories. They’ll want to hear ’em, read ’em, see ’em (theater, films, etc.). They’ll want to act them out. We are a story-telling species. The medium is far, far less important than the story. Flexibility/adaptability/range are the keys to surviving uncertain times.
Paper books have been around for a long time, and still offer strengths that other media don’t. Durability is one, as we have no electronic storage medium that rivals the centuries that acid-free paper lasts. Books offer physical pleasures that ereaders don’t (at least, so far) and (getting wilder here) people who grew up with books are less likely to completely discard them than people who grew up with computers. So we have overlapping generations of book-pref and computer/edevice-pref.
We’re definitely in a shakedown period of electronic publishing. Some of what’s going by the wayside should stay there, but often, good stuff risks becoming lost as well. It will take a while for new systems to emerge, and for errors to correct themselves.
One of the greatest potentials for epublishing is the rebirth of the midlist. This is where the most imaginative, risk-taking writing lives. These books challenged readers, to be savored over and over. Once upon a time, read-it-once best-sellers subsidized the midlist, to everyone’s benefit. Then came the era of bean-counters, where every book was supposed to be a best-seller, so away went these precious but not wildly successful books. Now, most of them did make money. Just not enough. Enough, though, to support an author if the right audiences could be reached. This is where I am hoping electronic publishing will shine, by providing a framework for works that do not pander to the lowest-common-denominator audiences, and by using the power of electronic communications to connect these books with their audiences.
At least, that’s what I hope will happen.
