ePublishing Renaissance
Written on March 17, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
My friend, Chris Andrews, publisher of a new website called Gutenberg.com, has predicted that 2009 will be, finally, the Year of the eBook. Of course, people have been saying that for years, but maybe this year it’s actually going to come around.
Back in 2002 I worked on an outline for what I thought of as the definitive eBook Book, a tome I hoped would become an ultimate reference for those who wanted to produce and consume electronic written documents. While my lack of savvy as a negotiator (maybe compounded by a print publisher’s natural resistance to the subject matter) resulted in a breakdown in contract discussions, I almost sold the concept to a publisher, too. But that, it turns out, was too early in the lifecycle of this industry, at least for me. Now, however, times have changed.
Amazon’s much-touted new version of their Kindle
Another factor that hasn’t been mentioned as often as the purely technical ones is the current economic climate. It seems counter-intuitive that an industry and technology that have been struggling for more than a decade to make inroads in consumer buying might suddenly take off when money is tight, but there are several reasons why this might be so.
First, ebooks are cheaper to produce and distribute than print books, and some publishers pass on some of those cost savings in the form of lower prices. Then, people who have lost their jobs have more time to read. (Not a happy thought, but true.) And many people who are suddenly part of the leisure class also have time to write. Not only that, but epublishing is suprisingly easy and inexpensive to do on a rudimentary scale. Oh, it can be complicated, and might require as many technical experts, editors and marketers as traditional print publishing depending on how it’s done, but it is still possible to break into the business on a shoestring, working single-handedly.
So why don’t more out-of-work people write and publish their own ebooks? Look around the Web. They’re doing it! And some are doing a good job of it, too. A lot of ebooks are just a waste of time, of course, but that can be said of traditionally produced print books, too. The point I’m trying to make is that epublishing has reached a point in its maturity as a technology just in time to catch the wave of cultural readiness brought on by economic insecurity. It’s an ill wind that blows no good. Maybe the good that comes out of our present situation will ultimately be a real literary renaissance for the common man (and woman).
What am I going to do about all this? I might just write that book, and maybe even publish it myself as an ebook (which is what the editor at that publisher had suggested I do back in 2002), but in the meantime I’m working on several projects with other writers and editors, to be published electronically. Those activities will not only keep me occupied and maybe even produce a little income eventually, but they will certainly give me yet more good experience to write about in that eBook Book-to-be. And as I do all this research, I’ll be writing about it here, too, so stay tuned!
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