David Nygren gives a bullet point list of his vision of the future of book publishing. I’m going to have to go back and read again x4, but the salient points that made me go “yep!” were:
– Yes. iTunes for books. Amazon is trying to be it, but with the last few days’ delays in Kindle transmissions (Kindle does not say “Nom.” Kindle says, “Hur? You didn’t send me a file. No, you didn’t!”) and the proprietary content and format, it won’t happen.
– Small pub good.
[Thanks to Smart Bitch Hubby for the link.]
To be fair, the iTunes format is pretty proprietary.
You know, that’s almost exactly how I’ve been envisioning the shift to e-books. There will always be a place for print, but it would be an on-demand kind of thing; print takes over the place of hardcovers (prefer paperback for most of my books, don’t want to spend the dollars, space, weight on hardcovers).
One word Y’all: Nintendo!
Europe, those lucky bastards, get a test cartridge- 100 Books and plays for 30 bucks. (Galley cat reported this about a day ago!) All in public domain: Shakespeare, Austin, Dickens all for your DS lite! (The new lite comes out next year, it will whack Kindle.) They have been working on PDA functions for it and it will STILL play games!!!!!!!!!!!
DS Lite already has wi-fi and download capacity!
I can’t wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t play too many games, so I am not sure about the Ninetendo for me. I have been playing with the itunes Stanza, which I am enjoying.
I have also been using my new Sony although I do have a Kindle on back order. I am not sure about the new Sony- the only problem I have with it is the light- which I really need. But it drains battery power very quickly. I did get hubby the lighted cover for his Sony 505, and we shall see if it lasts longer.
The problem I had with getting a Kindle (besides being out of stock- thanks Oprah), was that I thought I would go crazy with the wireless downloads. It’s just as bad with the ereader. I can sit here and shop and dl very quickly. don’t need to hook up to the book until I want to. Great, just great.
More and more I am thinking about getting a DS. They just seem so useful and handy.
One area where I think print will still be in demand for quite some time is schools where students have a set of books they have to read, like The Outsiders. It would probably be expensive to have electronic readers passed out and replaced, compared to a single book.
I figure e-readers will eventually become like cell phones & iPods: just too convenient NOT to have. The technology isn’t there yet. I’ll know it has arrvied when my mom gets it 🙂
I see print diverging – inexpensive POD, and aesthetically pleasing quality books for those keeper books. As soon as there are decent e-book reading systems, I suspect that e-books will pretty much replace mass-market format – although with e-books, it will be much easier for a newer or a mid-list author’s works to remain in publication longer than a few months, so I’m hoping that this will prove beneficial to authors.
As for e-book reading devices, I haven’t got one, yet, but I’m watching with interest. The DH has an i-phone and is playing with ebooks on that, but the screen is too small for my fast reading speed/poor eyesight combination.
I’m keeping my eye on mini-computers; I travel a lot, and I’d like the convenience of a practical computing device for both writing and reading. Maybe next year.