Digital Media Replaces Traditional Publishing?

Young child enjoys time at the library.

The digital future is here. From printed book to PDF copy, onto to e-book sales and now digital applications of books are making their way onto the iPhone/iTouch. With buzz words like Amazon’s “Kindle”, and “Sony Reader”, electronic readers are circulating throughout the net and in homes. Now we are being introduced to the iPad. It seems every month or two something new is being introduced throughout the reading world. Whatever happened to a simple pocketbook purchase that you could tuck away in a backpack and pull out on the bus?

Now-a-days, the “next” generation is pulling out their iPhones or a similar device that allows for music and application downloads that include simple e-books to read or interactive, digitized books to learn with. In addition to these are online bookstores selling their version of a reader – for books that can be downloaded, and read in a variety of fonts and displays of pages.

Authors not seeking the traditional publishing route are looking seriously at other publishing formats besides a hard or soft cover book. It is hard to know where to go on the net, what to look for and how much one should spend.

Traditional Publishers are also looking at hard copy sales versus electronic sales of books to see what their publishing mandates should be in the future.

Libraries are investigating other options as well. The Nan Boothby Memorial Library, Cochrane Public Library, in Cochrane, Alberta, Canada is one example. They have recently purchased an electronic reader and are hoping patrons will invest in a small fee each time the device is checked out to help with the cost of the device and subsequent downloads of books.

Schools find it cheaper to provide laptops to students and have them download curriculum textbooks online rather than purchasing or borrowing books. School libraries are also opting to download and build online libraries.

One thing is for certain, fast moving technology is introducing new ways people can read books on devices that are becoming common personal items in every home.

What happens over the next several years will be paramount to a shift in reading as we know it today. Fast forward to twenty years from now (will it take that long? – take a look at this link: www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2009/09/04/a_library_without_the_books) where we see a new generation of grade one students touring through a library display in a museum looking at a stained and ragged-edged, well-used picture book under glass, and asking “What the heck is that?”.

(Comments are most welcome, especially regarding the link article.)

Tags: Digital Publishing