Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

You’re losing control of your own destiny. Authors, distributors and readers are getting closer to each other.

–Shiv Singh, Engaging Readers in the Digital Age

Three weeks ago, when I last posted something here, I was on the verge of completely disappearing into Digital Book World, both the conference and the community that spun out of it, the latter now representing my day [and night, and some weekends] job.

So I’ve been pretty busy.

Thankfully, it’s been a good busy, and the next couple of months are going to be very exciting.

Digital Book World

The conference was a huge success by pretty much any measure — I had the extreme honor of giving the closing remarks, “The Future of Publishing is Bright” — and the community platform is quickly coming together, starting with a series of free WEBcasts; in-person seminars (Digitize Your Career); and more to be announced.

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The Pirate's Dilema by browserd

There are millions of books on amazon.com, and on average each will sell around 500 copies a year. The average American is reading just one book a year, and that number is falling. The problem (to quote Tim O’Reilly) isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity. Authors are lucky to be in a business where electronic copies aren’t considered substitutes for physical copies by most people who like reading books (for now at least).

–Matt Mason, The Pirate’s Dilemma

The op-ed I wrote for Publishing Perspectives earlier this week, “E” is for Experiment (Not E-books), got an unexpected amount of attention and I’m pretty sure it’s the most I’ve ever seen a post of mine fly around the Twitterverse. Writing for someone else’s site is much harder than blogging on your own, so full credit to Edward Nawotka for a great job of editing it, helping me bring forward my main points and carving away the extraneous content, most of which went into my previous post!

One of the comments I got on the article allowed me to elaborate a bit on one of the points I made, that “e-readers will never have their ‘iPod moment’ for one very simple reason: books are not music.”

Dan from BookLamp mildly disagreed with me, making a point about the potential benefits of cost-savings and discoverability afforded by eBooks and eReaders, making a subtle pitch for his own platform that purportedly “matches readers to books through an analysis of writing styles, similar to the way that Pandora.com matches music lovers to new music.”

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SciFi Hall Of Fame by TahoeSunsets

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

–Sidney J. Harris

It’s no secret that I’m not a big fan of eBooks or eReaders, but there’s no question they’re growing in popularity… at least amongst technology companies. While the hype coming out of last week’s Consumer Electronics Show was so over-the-top it’s difficult to take any of these new devices seriously, it does make you appreciate a bit more the huge advantages Amazon has with its Kindle.

Publishing Perspectives’ editor Edward Nawotka stirred up some controversy last week with his opinion that the current breed of eReaders were good enough, noting, “My septuagenarian mother is delighted with her first-generation Kindle.”

My thirty-something wife – an avid reader, elementary school teacher and generally a late-adopter – also enjoys her Kindle (a birthday gift from me in November 2008), mainly to read books she’s either unfamiliar with or unwilling to buy in hardcover. But it’s not going to become her primary reading option any time soon. Among her criticisms are the limited selection of books she wants to read; inelegant navigation and annotation functionality; and, in her words, “Everyone talks about portability, but what’s more portable than a book?”

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Sanctum Sanctorum, 01/10 by glecharles

“Publishing was never a business based on Wharton standards. It was a rich boy’s hobby.”

–Steve Wasserman (Kneerim & Williams)

Working in publishing isn’t for the meek. Neither is writing for that matter. They’re two things I’m really passionate about, though, and I’ve always counted myself lucky to work in the publishing industry, despite the ever-present danger of familiarity breeding contempt.

Over the past couple of years, though, it’s been particularly tough; like playing on a solid defense for a football team that has a terrible offense, constantly watching the QB get sacked, the RB get stuffed, WRs getting manhandled… and running on fumes by the 4th quarter as a result.

I consider myself a pragmatic idealist with an optimistic lean, but when you see colleagues and friends losing their jobs due to reasons beyond their control and underlying problems they didn’t create, it can be tough to feel good about the good things you’re involved in.

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