Overview of The New World of Reading, Writing, and Publishing

I've written many posts about new opportunities for readers, new challenges for writers, and new business models for publishers.

I've linked to many other sites to give a rounded view of the transformation we're going through in the Book-World.

I've found a wonderful article that's a great summary of most of the changes and we'll get to that soon.

First though, while trying to find, amongst the 330 posts on this blog, appropriate ones to link-to in this post, I decided to use my own search function ( it's in the upper right of the blog just above the yellow RSS feed link :-)

For posts about readers, check out this link about Reading.

For posts about writers, try this link about Writer.

For posts about publishers, look to Traditional.

There are other search terms you can use but these seemed appropriate for this post.

While scanning my Google Alerts I noticed an article in Ecommerce Times by Jeff Kagan called, How the E-Book Is Reinventing the Book Business, but it's not merely about e-books.

Here are a few excerpts:

"Just as the iPod changed the music industry a decade ago, e-books are changing the publishing world right now. The rule book is being rewritten, and lessons in success and failure are coming from new and unexpected places."

"I wrote a book in the 1990s. By the time I wrote my second, a year and a half ago, the industry had changed. Now it has changed again. And we are still just in the first inning of this new game."

"Understanding this new world can be complicated. Some of these publishers work with both real books and e-books, while others just work with e-books. How you get paid from each is different as well. Understanding this changing industry can be a challenge to wrap your arms around, but this chaos is where new leaders are born."

"Yesterday, publishers would have to preprint books in the thousands and try and convince bookstores to display them, front and center, in the hope they would be sold. This did not play to the author's advantage. After a while, they would disappear, making room for the next wave of new books. Limited real estate in stores.

"Today, things are much different. Today, there are publishers who will print one single book at a time. A customer finds the book online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or tons of other sites, orders the book, and a single copy is printed, shipped and delivered to the customer in about a week."

"This e-book revolution is changing the book publishing space quickly and completely. Whether you lead, follow, or are lost in the chaos of this new revolution is the only question. Readers love it. They have the choice of buying the old-fashioned way at a store, buying a book online, or buying an e-book instantly."

There's much more interesting information in this article, for readers, writers, and publishers, and I urge you to read the whole thing.

Plus, it's so well-written that I'd recommend careful attention while reading—it seems like a simple overview of existing trends while it actually could be seen as a "manifesto" for that change :-)

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Tagged: Jeff Kagan, publisher, publishing, reader, reading, self-publishing, writer, writing