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i will be happy to shed some light;
not right now, but sometime soon.
i don't believe the future of books
will be determined by "publishers",
any more than the future of music
will be determined by the r.i.a.a.
their time has passed. they did a
good job, and deserve our thanks.
(and the money they milked from us.)
but their time is now officially over.
they are no longer in charge of us...
heck, even their _back-catalogs_
will come to be of very little value
if they insist on locking them up,
because the world of tomorrow will
have an abundance of content that
most authors will give away freely,
after having learned that the readers
will happily reciprocate financially...
that p-book you just paid $20 for?
the author got a buck. will you really
withhold your dollar from that author?
i gave a bigger tip than that at _lunch_,
to a waitress because she smiled at me.
this myth that writers will not write unless
we pay them is propagated by accountants.
i'm a writer and i know lots of other writers.
and we write because we _have_to_ write...
maybe the _accountants_ will stop working
if we don't pay them. (couldn't blame 'em.
and you know, that's really not a bad idea.)
but us writers will keep right on writing...
and we trust that our fans will reward us.
not only that, we actively look forward
to exercising a gift-based relationship
with fans, not the extortion-based one
of "pay me first if you want this book".
tomorrow's authors will take books
_directly_ to their readership. ergo,
what they need is a format that will
get out of their way when they write,
but give the high-powered functionality
readers will soon expect from e-books.
it's humorous to watch all this flurry
around formats and d.r.m. and such.
talk about barking up the wrong tree!
we're gonna be transforming society!
that's what the discussion needs to be!
-bowerbird
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