"Cyberbooks" by Ben Bova

[Crusader]

While browsing an online auction website I came across a title that caught my eye - Cyberbooks by Ben Bova. I don't know if it has been mentioned before but seeing as it was written in 1989 I guess that's a predicition he got right, although the format of todays ebooks are a bit different.

Book Review plus cover art

I might just place a bid on the paperback to see how the story turns out...

The blurb on the back is also classic. I think it sums up the current publishing industry nicely.

"Now wait a minute," said Ralph Malzone, "You mean..."
"No paper!" Carl exulted. "You don't have to chop down trees and make paper and haul tons of stuff to the printing presses and then haul the printed books to the stores. You move electrons and photons instead of paper. It's cheap and efficient."

Fir a long time Malzone said nothing. Then he sighed a very heavy sigh. "You're saying that a publisher won't need printers, paper, ink, wholesalers, route salesmen, district managers, truck drivers - not even booksellers?"


"The whole thing can be done electronically," Carl enthused.
"Shop for books by TV. Buy them over the phone. Transmit them anywhere on Earth almost instantaneusly, straight to the customer."

Malzone glanced around the shadows of the room uneasily.
In a near whisper he told Carl, "Jesus Christ, kid, you're going to get both of us killed."

[Nate the great]

I happen to have that book. It's a shame postage is so high, otherwise I'd just give it to you.

[pshrynk]

It's one of life's little ironies that Cyberbooks is not available in e-book format...

[igorsk]

Baen's Laugh Lines collection includes Cyberbooks.

Introduction to Cyberbooks

I've been writing science fiction long enough so that some of my fiction has become fact. Take Cyberbooks, for example. When I wrote this novel, in the late 1980s, electronic books were nothing more than a glimmer in the eyes of a few engineers. Today they are being peddled in shopping malls and catalogues.

But predicting a technological innovation is easy. What makes Cyberbooks interesting, to me, is the way the novel depicts the book publishing industry's reaction to the technological innovation.

The truth is, you see, that Cyberbooks is a satire of the New York-based book publishing industry. The novel came about because Tom Doherty, publisher of Tor Books, enjoyed my earlier satirical novel, The Starcrossed. "You should do a novel about the publishing industry," he insisted. "I could tell you stories!"

Well,everybody in the business has hair-raising (or stomach-turning) stories to tell about the publishing industry. I have a few myself. Many of them have been woven into the warp an woof of Cyberbooks.

For Years, young wannabe writers who've read Cyberbooks would ask me tearfully, "The industry in New York isn't as bad as you paint it in your novel, is it?

"No of course not," I always assure them. "It's worse."

P.S. shouldn't this be in Reading Recommendations?

[Crusader]

Well originally it was just an interesting title I came across seeing as it predicted ebooks way before their time. It wasn't meant as a recommendation/discussion of the actual book. That's why I put it here.