Thanks to raevyn1 who dropped this one into my inbox today: John Dvorak hosted Neil Gaiman and Dan Farmer on his last videocast Crankygeeks and devoted about 3 minutes to a brief discussion on the future of e-books and on publishing them online. No super-brilliant insights, but it's interesting to glimpse what well-known writers think of the shape of things to come. Excerpt:
Quote:
JD: Sony's e-book reader just came out. Do you do any of the e-stuff?
NG: I do some of the e-stuff. The only thing I really like e-books for is reading in the dark when you have like a wife fast asleep in the bed next to you who really doesn't want you to turn on a bedside lamp.
DF: Books are dinosaurs. We love books because we have this emotional attachment. When we grow up we love learning from books and they mean so much to us (I've written one myself). But kids these days they're going to say good-bye to books as soon as there is a good reader. I don't want to carry this book around I want to carry something that has all my books. When I am in the kitchen I want all my cook books in the one reader.
JD: E-book readers will continue to fail because they are inconvenient. There is no way you can flip through.
DF: You are suffering from the mentality of the ? of the present software. We are going get passed these technological limitations. I agree, we don't have any good ones right now. It will happen. It is deterministic. These things [pointing at a book] are gone. Within our lives - the kids will be laughing at us. They are already laughing at us!
JD: What do you think about the idea of publishing online for free and selling in the background?
NG: Fine. I don't have a problem with it at all. I think that the Internet for an author is the best advertising tool in the world... The main reason [why NG doesn't give out his books for free online] is because I have sold the rights to the books, the copyright, to the publishers, and I don't have the rights to put them up online myself.
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Neil Gaiman is the award-winning SFF author of
Anansi Boys,
American Gods, and
Neverwhere, just to name a few. I highly recommend you to check out
his journal where he interacts with his readers and provides all sorts of insights into the world of a writer.
This Crankygeeks episode is offered for download in
various video formats.