Monday, April 6, 2009

Future of Publishing

If books become a digitized commodity, the money won’t be there to produce high-quality ones (and authors all become de facto volunteers). So then we’ll have pseudo-books instead—a cordoned-off collection of curated blog posts masquerading as timely books, distributed online to hand-held reading devices along the lines of Kindle or a netbook. You could already compile one of commentary on the financial crisis. Alongside the collaboratively compiled, rapidly published texts from the publishing industry of the future will be micropublishing, feeding those publishers, things along the lines of blogs and Facebook updates and the like. So maybe it would be more accurate to say authorship will be everywhere and nowhere.

Via Daily via Popmatters.

Thoughts?

2 comments:

the decorator said...

I completely agree... Read any dystopian novel... the truths that exist there are being lived now. How prophetic.

homespunangela said...

but but. noooo.... I don't want to read books on a screen :(
How can they take away the nostalgia of going to the bookstore and taking home the words and the art on the cover, the smell of the new print, or if you bought it used, the yellowing pages and just the pure vibe of reading a book in your hands. Not straining your eyes on a little electronic screen. Psh.
And what about libraries, they get new books too. How does that solve a financial crisis by eliminating the librarian profession.

does this mean authors will have to start publishing their own books the way musicians are producing and recording their own art since the big wigs a slowly crumbling as well?