Friday, April 23, 2010

Digital Book World

Some great new developments about the changing industry at Digital Book World. I especially enjoyed the comics write-up and Jane Friedman's blog. There are so many levels to the changing industry, with the "top story" (the corporate-level ministrations published by the mainstream press and clearly biased toward whatever will keep it viable and relevant and please shareholders) being that Apple is saving altruistic, good-hearted publishers from Evil Amazon; the middle level is, "Which device should I buy when there are a million choices and I have no guarantee that every book will be available on any of them?"; and the lower level, where every kid is coming up with her own cool app and is being the content and entertainment instead of consuming it.

The notion of transmedia is also a bit intriguing--it almost seems as though this struggle to establish e-books will be entirely overwhelmed by the crashing wave of new media content, a hybridized book/comic/movie/audiobook. Or, as one iPad reviewer noted, while publishers are battling over whether ebooks should be $9.99 or $14.99, "I am finding lots of cool things that are a lot less than $9.99."
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