Re: What is a book in 2008?

>     Posted by: "dtpollard947" [email protected] dtpollard947
>     Date: Sun Dec 14, 2008 6:47 am ((PST))

> If digital formats took hold and began to dominate, it would destroy
> traditional book retailing, how authors interact with customers and
> somewhat change what it meant to be an author.

Nothing new about technology impacting media, and nothing special  
about "digital" that makes it different from other disruptive  
technology transitions.

Vaudeville was damaged by cinema and completely destroyed by television.

Live theatre, however, survives, as of this date only slightly the  
worse for wear.

As amusingly dramatized in "Singin' in the Rain," the coming of sound  
to motion pictures utterly destroyed the careers of some movie  
megastars and launched the careers of completely new ones.

Magazines were transformed in the late 1890s, suddenly becoming a  
cheap mass medium and a market for short-story fiction. Jack London  
was one of the first, if not the first American writer to make a  
major commercial success from writing, and he did it mostly through  
magazines. Then a few decades ago this market all but vanished.

And of course non-technology events can also utterly transform media.  
If ASCAP hadn't overplayed its hand in 1940, broadcasters might never  
have formed BMI, and rock 'n' roll might never have eclipsed Tin Pan  
Alley.

In 1982 Jack Valenti testified to Congress that home video, if  
allowed, would become the "Boston strangler" of the movies. Now the  
studios make more from home video than they do from theatrical releases.

An awful lot of news stories now include the reporter's email address  
and it's become second nature to me to respond, almost as I would to  
a forum posting. Conversely, I have now been contacted by reporters  
from the Wall Street Journal three separate times (!) in response to  
postings I've made in a financial forum. Journalism is become less  
and less one-way and more and more like an actual dialog. Perhaps the  
same will somehow become true for authorship in general


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