Here’s an experpt from my occasional column in the Colorado Romance Writers’ newsletter, Romancing The Rockies, about the future of books and publishing: Will books as we know them disappear?
If you’ve spent any time with me, you know that I tremble with fear any time I think about traditional books going the way of our IBM Selectric typewriters and carbon paper. (Okay, I’ve got to admit it, I don’t miss the messy carbon and figuring out how to correct that second page and realign the paper, even if I do sometimes miss my big clunky typewriter.)
In the June 19, 2000 edition of TIME Magazine, there’s a short article by Stephen King, the first really big name author to wade into electronic publishing. According to King, he can’t imagine book lovers giving up their books, nor is he willing to give up his own books.
The same edition of TIME Magazine has a fascinating article titled, “Will We Still Turn Pages?” The article suggests that we might soon have books with digital pages, complete with digital ink. We could load our e-books onto the digital pages and still read a book in the traditional way-by turning the page. One day we may have several digital books with a varying number of pages for different length books.
One advantage of digital books might be that we could also play a movie or music videos on these same pages.
Long live technology-as long as you don’t take away my books!