As I read the April 19th edition of Publishers Weekly, which has a number of articles touching on e-books, I’m reminded of the 1970s when Gottschalk’s, a Fresno-based department store chain, was offering free lessons to housewives on how to use a new-fangled device called a microwave. I’m also reminded of when Beta was battling VHS for dominance in our living rooms. And of the mid-1400s when Guttenberg put his big toe into the river that today we call the “information highway.”
The e-reader or mobile device—it’ll do a lot more than allow you to read text—is analogous to the microwave. We still don’t understand quite what it is or what it will do for us but we are anxious to learn.
And today’s technology battle is among competing e-book formats (Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iPad, Adobe’s Digital Editions, and the soon-to-be-released Blio, just to name a few frontrunners), each vying to be the leading, if not the exclusive format.
Finally, the Guttenbergs of the day are giving us many new ways to receive information beyond ink on paper, often richly interactive ways Guttenberg could never have envisioned.
It’s fun to watch, but it’s difficult to know where to place your money.
What should an author or publisher do at this stage? Learn what you can, participate when it makes sense, but don’t fret. Content is still king and when the dust settles, the king may have a queen, a few princes or princesses, and maybe even a consort or two, but it’ll still be king.
Just a write thought.