Will boomers embrace the new e-book revolution or resist it and leave it to generation x or y to figure out?
As the largest generation with still a good deal of disposable income despite the crash, also with the last
generation for a taste for reading as opposed to sitting by an electronic screen--my guess is that the boomers
will reinvent the entire process of writing books, distributing them and reading before we move off.
I was prompted by these thoughts due to an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal that
focused on how the economics of ebooks--otherwise known as digital books will transform
our half a millenium or so habit of reading the printed word. Author Steven Johnson writes
in this section about how we will get to discover new books:
"The economics of digital books will likely change the conventions of reading and writing as well. Digital distribution makes it a simple matter to offer prospective buyers a "free sample" to entice them to purchase the whole thing. Many books offered for the Kindle, for instance, allow readers to download the first chapter free of charge. The "free sample" component of a book will become as conventional as jacket-flap copy and blurbs; authors will devise a host of stylistic and commercial techniques in crafting these giveaway sections, just as Dickens mastered the cliffhanger device almost two centuries before.
It's not hard to imagine, for instance, how introductions will be transformed in this new world. Right now, introductions are written with the assumption that people have already bought the book. That won't be the case in the future, when the introduction is given away. It will, no doubt, be written more to entice readers to buy the whole book.
Steven Johnson tells a story about how he was suddenly inspired in a coffee shop to stop what he was reading on his Kindle
and "dutifully working my way through an e-book about business and technology, when I was hit with a sudden desire to read a novel. After a few taps on the Kindle, I was browsing the Amazon store, and within a minute or two I'd bought and downloaded Zadie Smith's novel "On Beauty." By the time the check arrived, I'd finished the first chapter."
Nice.
Johnson predicts that a la carte pricing will emerge
".. as it has in the marketplace for digital music. Readers will have the option to purchase a chapter for 99 cents, the same way they now buy an individual song on iTunes. The marketplace will start to reward modular books that can be intelligibly split into standalone chapters.
This fragmentation sounds unnerving -- yet another blow to the deep-focus linearity of the print-book tradition. Breaking the book into detachable parts may sell more books, but there are certain kinds of experiences and arguments that can only be conveyed by the steady, directed immersion that a 400-page book gives you. A playlist of the best chapters from "Middlemarch," "Gravity's Rainbow" and "Beloved" will never work the way a playlist of songs culled from different albums does today."
Boomers are we ready for this world--will we be the ones to embrace or resist? What about you? Please send us your comments.