Thoughts on the digital age
February 5, 2009 – 8:49 amI’m an aging librarian who once worked for a book publisher; now I watch the current waves in publishing and wonder how any business model will enable publishers to stay afloat. A new acquaintance who works for the city shared her interest in a recent Time Magazine article and the issue of self-published authors.
When I went to library school, self-publishing was generally interpreted to mean that one’s work wasn’t good enough or of interest to a broad enough range of readers for any publisher to buy the rights. Now, as the Time article linked below reveals, it is such a risky time for mainstream publishers to take on new material, we are quite likely to see much much more self-publishing of great material like Still Alice.
With Sony ebook Readers, pod-casts and blogs, print and non-print formats are blurring daily and information is less and less distinguishable by format alone. As an audiovisual librarian I find this intriguing, but philosophically I wonder about our culture, the reader and the ability to identify balanced points of view on wide-ranging topics. Hmmm. “May we live in interesting times. . . .” What are YOUR thoughts?
Books Gone Wild: The Digital Age Reshapes Literature
By Lev Grossman, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009, Time Magazine
Chris Jackson / Getty
One Response to “Thoughts on the digital age”
One of our Friends of the Library volunteers bought herself an e-reader because she has arthritis and likes to read long novels which are heavy and hurt her hands to hold. The e-reader was lighter-weight and she could have several books at a time on it! So it wasn’t necessarily the technology that converted her, it was the practicality for her hands.
By Eva on Feb 5, 2009