Yet more noodlings on the future of books, folks, this time from a piece I had published in the Evening Herald yesterday (Thursday), titled – rather cleverly, I thought, albeit not by me – ‘Book Online’. The intro runneth thusly: You’ve probably never heard of Cayla Kluver, but the 14-year-old American girl made history last month when her debut novel was published by Amazon.com. That’s ‘published’ by Amazon, not ‘sold’. That difference, between Amazon publishing and selling, is just one of the reasons the books industry is going through a revolution akin to Gutenberg inventing the printing press way back in 1439.For the rest, clickety-click here …
As always, the main reason for the seismic tremors is new technology. Amazon’s Kindle arrived last year to great fanfare, when it was marketed as "an iPod for books", whereby a reader can download books electronically from Amazon and read them on the Kindle ‘e-reader’ (short for ‘electronic reader’), which does its best to imitate the authentic reading experience. The jury is still out as to how user-friendly the Kindle is, and -- given how pricey it is -- whether readers would be happy bringing it onto the beach or lugging it around at the bottom of a bag. But all electronic devices have their early teething problems, and the Kindle -- and its counterpart, the Sony Reader -- is long-range targeting a demographic that is just as comfortable with electronic devices -- mobile phones, iPods, laptops, et al -- as it is with traditional books.
There’s good and bad news in this for readers and writers alike …
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