Posted on Monday 8 February 2010
http://mashable.com/2010/02/04/amazon-macmillan-war/
Before you become a writer, know that books are all but gone. When people write for the wired age, it will be in a very short form, and not for paper. Think, a page or two at a time and over weeks of time. A subscription model.
In a way, it’s history repeating itself. First there was oratory. Then oration collected in expensive books. Books don’t sell, but magazines do (books a chapter at a time). Eventually compilations of chapters became cheap enough to own as a book.
I think people will no longer want to read books, if for no other reason than they perceive reading as requiring to much time. They’ll want stories to be a screen or two of text at a time and to continue day or every few days. When they find something they like, they will buy it as a compilation, and probably as an electronic text (as long as they think they get to keep their text for a long time).
Amazon is trying to be the Gutenberg press of the electronic world. MacMillan? They are the record company of the publishing world.