Worth a post all by itself, I give you John Scalzi's electronic publishing bingo card.
At first I thought of taking the card and playing seriously with it. That is, marking down each time I saw one of the things in the squares during my readings of blogs, articles, and list serve discussions. Then I realized, what fun would that be? I'd fill the card in an hour of reading. Two max.
Maybe this shows more what I've been reading than that the world is all atwitter over the topic.
BTW, anyone else annoyed that they feel like they can't use the word "atwitter" anymore because it's too close to Twitter? Every time I go to type atwitter, I wonder if I should only use it to refer to that which Twitter is atwitter about and that makes me sad.
I'm terribly interested in e-publishing information, but then again I'm terribly interested in publishing information, period. I even took a graduate level course on publishing this past fall. I find it all fascinating, and I think that shrewd business moves can be made through the use of ebook publication. Then again, it's not the medium or the market that has the golden touch, it's the author. And just as many stupid business moves can be made through ebook publication as smart ones (probably more if human nature has anything to say about it).
I'm interested, I'm just starting to get very annoyed with all those out there talking about e-publishing like it is the messiah come to save us from the publishing industry, low authors' advances, mistreatment of mid-list authors, mistreatment of new authors, the decline of hard cover books, the decline of mass market paperback books, the decline in reading, the increase in reading that's not novels, growth of technology use, the death of paper, the death of brick and mortar book stores, the death of polar bears, cheap readers with limited discretionary funds who can afford a $200 e-reader but not the $10 book to read on it, and those nasty nasty gatekeeping agents who want to do things like sell your book.
Don't get me wrong folks, I find it interesting, but I'm not bowing at the altar.
