When the iPad hit the market, I pointed out that this remarkable device will be wildly successful but won’t capture the bulk of the market for the dedicated reader. One might argue that while it does provide the reader with an excellent format for the experience, there are too many divisive distractions embedded in the device to compete with the dedicated reader’s primary motive, which is to absorb the content offered by the author.

On the other hand, the device is available to Kindle and other device brand owners to download digital books they have purchased from their respective online book stores and read them on the iPad in the Apple device’s format. Kindle has a huge pool of digital books, and a record of longevity that gives it a distinct advantage over other online bookstores.

Whether or not Barnes and Noble’s new Nook digital device will catch up to Kindle in sheer volume is still in play. Sony, too is in the digital race, having been the first to introduce a portable screen reading device. Kobo, a Borders partner is now in the game as well and Google is next in line.

Another argument in favor of the dedicated reader choosing an exclusive device concerns the habits of the traditional book buyer. When a reader enters a brick and mortar bookstore, he is seeking reading material exclusively, words on paper. Normally he will sample a few pages to determine whether the book suits his interest. This sampling aspect has been dealt with by Kindle, Nook, Sony and other digital reading device makers. They allow sampling before purchase.

Content aside, there is also the matter of price and portability where Kindle shines. It is much less expensive than the iPad and because of its size easily portable. It can fit easily into a woman’s pocketbook or the side pocket of a man’s jacket.

In my various blogs on the subject I cited, too, that dedicated readers are not a dying species as some alarmist commentators have alleged. Yes, it is true that younger readers who have grown up on a diet of television apparently are more interested in visual media these days than the written word. I have argued that sooner or later they will discover that the world of the imagination, the imagery concocted by the human brain, is more powerful than anything that can be served up in the visual media.

I do, by the way, love movies, but comparing the emotional kick of a good book over a movie, I think a book wins hands down. Call it a personal prejudice for obvious reasons.

Perhaps as a writer of the imagination I am too prejudiced about the power of the written word to make anything but a purely subjective judgment on this subject. Nevertheless I will stick with the idea that expanding world-wide literacy will increase the population of dedicated readers and render the prevailing opinion that “people are reading less” a false premise.

There is another strange phenomenon occurring that might be characterized as unintended consequences and that is the explosion of self-published books that can be easily transported to electronic readers and be available on the internet. There are statistics available that self-published books are approaching an astounding 300,oo0 a year in the United States alone. The world-wide statistic is unknown but must be at least equal to that number.

Traditional publishers in the United States publish about 275,000 books a year, which means that in the US alone nearly a half a million books are being published. With self-publishing exploding one can envision a backlist that will soon approach many millions of books, eventually billions. In cyberspace nothing will ever go out of print.

For the serious author who hopes for a respectable readership, whether self-published or traditionally published, the challenges are enormous.

This tells me that the passion for authordom, both fiction and non-fiction in all the various genres is accelerating at an enormous rate. Of course this does not mean that readers are rushing to absorb the content of these self-published authors, but it does tell me that the appetite for creating reading material is growing exponentially. Such offerings have got to result in attracting readers, even if the response to the self-published offerings may be too fractionalized for breakout sales possibilities.

Indeed, there is a growing industry of alleged facilitators who for a price, believe they have the answer for authors who wish to rise above the chatter and build an audience on the Internet. So far I am rather cynical about their efficacy. No one has as yet come close to finding that answer.

Nevertheless what all this implies is that the written word is far from expiring and the appetite for reading is growing.

Within the next few years numerous reading devices will hit the market. With the ability to read books on smart phones and this proliferating electronic book explosion the traditional publishing industry will be stood on its head. Granted, readers will lose the professional screening and mediation of editors which could make the offerings of book less interesting and appealing. On the other hand the market will expand to bring in talented writers who were often rejected by publishers for purely market reasons based upon fickle sales histories. It will be up to the reader to discriminate and carefully choose his material.

As for me, a lover of books, to whom reading is one of the most profound experiences available to human beings, I find I am reading more books on screens than I had read in paper versions. Apparently, others are agreeing in droves.

The iPad has certain distinct disadvantages for the dedicated reader of books.

Essentially, there are two inhibiting factors, price and portability. Compared to the Kindle, for example, the add on cost for the content will be astronomical for the dedicated reader considering he or she will have to pay more than double the price for the iPad and need an online hookup that will pile on costs.

Big publishers have demanded and got an increase over the $9.95 cap originally priced by Kindle, which has been the standard cap since it was first launched. Publishers with books on the iPad will set their own price points which will begin well above the cap established earlier by Kindle. Whether they get their prices is a matter of conjecture.

For the record, the Harris Poll discovered in a survey two years ago, that 27% of Americans purchased more than ten books in 2007 while a quarter of Americans purchased none. This was, of course, before the new devices were brought to market with the SONY reader being the first followed by the Kindle. Into this mix will come the iPad and soon many others including Google will make it to market. The trend to e-books is now unstoppable.

In my opinion, the dedicated reader of books, not the casual reader will make the e-book market. They will be the principal buyers of content on these devices splitting their choices almost evenly between fiction and non-fiction.

As a dedicated reader myself, my rule of thumb may be not for everyone, but my book purchase habits, about 80% fiction and 20% non-fiction, add up to about 25 books a year bought through bookstores up until the e-book technology became user friendly in 2007. Before that all these books were purchased at bookstores as hardcover or paperbacks. Today more than 90% of my books are purchased as e-books and because of the ease of purchase and convenience I have nearly doubled my content purchases.

I may be an overzealous dedicated reader, but it might illustrate what I am getting at. Considering the cost of the iPad device and the amount of books a dedicated reader of books normally buys, the cost of each e-book purchased through Apple will be quite high, far more expensive than books bought on the dedicated reading devices like the Kindle and the SONY reader. The cost of the book itself might be competitive but the ancillary costs for the necessary add-ons cannot be ignored in the price point.

Of course, there are many casual readers who will also want the ability to see movies, play games, read newspapers, magazines and comic books and fiddle with all manner of other distractions as well as read books. For them the iPad will be a convenient device with an infinite variety of choices under one convenient roof, so to speak, much like a physical living room in the average home.

Somehow I believe that dedicated book readers, those of us who spent a lifetime browsing bookstores, to whom reading, especially works of the imagination, is akin to breathing will likely opt for a device dedicated exclusively to the act of reading.

Making such an argument must be paired with the advantages of portability. While the tablet appears elegant, a beautiful piece of design, with its 9.7 inch screen it is not sized for convenient portability. It does not pass the side pocket test of a man’s jacket or the average size of a woman’s pocketbook. Dedicated readers carry their books around in subways, buses, intercity trains and airplanes. They read on beaches, boats, benches, grassy knolls and forest clearings or anywhere at all where a quiet moment can be found. In my opinion the iPad’s size puts it at a disadvantage to the dedicated and, yes, compulsive book reader who moves around.

For the habitual multi-tasker the iPad will be a boon. He can flit between movies, magazines, maps, newspapers, TV shows, restaurant reservations, stock market prices, zillions of porno sites, check on his bank account, his buddies and kids, and chock as much information bloat into his brain as humanly possible. Note the word “human.” Observe the flitting activity of the household fly. Will we one day reach the inherent restlessness of the fly?

As an author/pioneer in e-books whose many books were digitized nearly a decade ago, I have heard every conceivable argument for and against the e-book experience. I believe that for most of us reading fanatics that argument has been put to rest. Content, as always, is king and confronting content on the screen using today’s devices offers its own intrinsic joys and comforts. Books are a one-on-one communication system and the words that form their content are at the heart of the process however they are delivered to the recipient. Besides, both fiction and non-fiction books are, in essence long works of the imagination requiring concentration and isolation to truly absorb their content. Distractions are inconsistent with that experience.

Where price and easy portability does not matter, the iPad might offer a considered choice for the dedicated bookreader. Chances are that I will yield to its temptations, but I don’t think it will be my reading device of first resort.

I offer this critique not in any way to diminish the wonders of the iPad. There are lots of people out there who will love it. It may or may not fit into my own patterns of entertainment. Indeed, reading books on it might offer a pleasing alternative for certain situations. Jumping on board the iPad for the big publishers might offer new opportunities for marketing and distribution but I think they should restrain their enthusiasm for it as a game changer and ultimate rescuer for their current economic challenges.

I have been attending various meetings of this sort for the past ten years, ever since I committed my authorial presence to the technology of reading on screens. Ten years ago, through rights reversals, I put all my previously published English language books on every digitized platform I could find.

Even after ten years, I appear to be the only author with my output that attends these conferences. Indeed, I did attend what was billed as a major conference on e-books sponsored by The Authors Guild. The house was packed. The lack of knowledge was overwhelming.

For what its worth, here is what I learned at the “Tools for Change” conference:

1. The overwhelming consensus is that e-book will one day be the dominant method of reading content.

2. Reading devices will proliferate exponentially throughout the world. It surprised me somewhat to discover that many are reading e-books on their laptops. The trend, however, is a shift from laptop to reading devices e.g. Kindle, SONY Reader and others entering the market place.

3. A vast marketplace is opening up for reading on smart phones that projects a market of billions of devices worldwide.

4. The traditional print publisher, regardless of a valiant last stand, will implode at an ever-increasing rate as more and more devices and digitized content hit the marketplace. The same will be true for big box bookstores and independents.

5. Metrics providers at the conference told us that the e-book market is currently at 4% of sales but rising fast. I do not believe their conclusions. It is probably undercounted. They did not provide the one crucial ingredient in their presentation, which is that the dedicated reader who has been the first wave of device buyers is purchasing and reading e-books at an astonishing rate largely because of the convenience of downloading on devices without having to go to a brick and mortar book store. According to their metrics, the leading category purchased by e-book buyers is general fiction, which, for most people, is a one-time read.

6. Traditional publishers are swiftly losing their monopoly on distribution, marketing, publicity and content. While existing brand name authors will continue to sell print hardcovers, albeit in ever decreasing numbers, the branding devices of the mass media are becoming less and less potent as newspapers decline and methods of book information dissemination become fractionalized into even more niches.

7. Brand name authors and those authors with large output (more than 25 books) will eventually create their own publishing and marketing vehicles through online outlets, since they will discover that the traditional publishers will no longer wield the marketing power and financial clout they once held and they will do a lot better on their own. Some are already doing it, creating more heartburn for publishers and agents. As advances recede more and more authors will take this road.

8. The avalanche of authors trying to enter the publishing world is exploding. Without taking into account the quality of their work or their commercial potential, most have, for whatever reason, not been able to attract the attention of traditional publishers and agents in today’s hard pressed economy in a declining print based industry. Conversion houses and marketing and publicity purveyors have sprung up designed to help these authors enter the e-book and print-on-demand world and post their books on all major online stores. While getting one’s book onto the online publishing world will satisfy the hopes and dreams of the author, the likelihood of reaching anything close to brand name status or even to sell a respectable number of books is infinitesimal. Nevertheless one cannot discount the power of hopes and dreams. Anything is possible. Despite the awesome odds in a lottery, some lucky bastard does win.

9. The use of the social networking sites to sell books is, in my view, uncharted territory. I don’t discount their use for this purpose and I do see their potential. They do create communities and encourage people to enter a conversation with others of like-minded interests and they do enhance awareness of authorial identity. There are now a vast number of “specialists” attempting to monetize their familiarity with these sites and a number of those exhibiting their wares at the convention cited these networks as an add-on sure-fire sales and marketing tool. We shall see. There is a kind of one-on-one aspect to these sites and many are addicted to their use, but since their use is hands on, I wonder how many authors will devote a large chunk of their lives to using their time for marketing purposes. I wonder, too, if a “ghost” who poses as the author can really gain authenticity.

10. There were a number of presentations at the convention about the “enhanced” book, meaning a book that is accompanied with video or some other add-on to compliment the reader’s experience, a kind of upgraded model of the graphic novel. I guess I am the wrong person to make an evaluation since I am committed to the idea that the images created by the printed word in the imagination of the reader is the core experience of story telling. A book of fiction, for example, takes place in the imagination and cannot be replicated through other media. This does not mean that I am against adaptations into visual media. Heck, they have provided a great enhancement for my career, but I am against the distraction of anything visual or audible on one’s concentration during the reading process. It is a stand-alone experience, trancelike and isolated, requiring deep emersion and total focus. Any distraction of this process diminishes the experience. On the other hand I do believe that visual enhancements can be extremely useful in instructional books where a visual demonstration can be compelling. But then why would one need a book as an enhancement of the visual?

11. I did detect some interesting marketing efforts to take advantage of niche penetration for authors and publishers. The idea is to slice the marketing targets into “relevant” categories of potential readers and pursue them on the Internet. With the potential demise of the mass media and the proliferation of infinite sites in cyberspace these attempts to connect with bits and pieces of potential readers seems to have promise for the author seeking to build his awareness level and find readers. We shall see.

12. While there are still many unanswered questions of how the future of electronic publishing will evolve, one thing is certain. It is here to stay. It will dominate the publishing business. It will forever change the output and lives of authors. It is no longer a question of why or how but the speed of when.

As a bona fide news junkie, which probably has something to do with having grown up during a period in New York City when there were eleven newspapers which covered what seemed at the time a world choked with events and never ending activity. It was not uncommon to become dependent on two, three or more of these newspapers for our daily fix of information.

Early habits are a powerful influence and it seems perfectly normal to have carried these habits into the age of the Internet, a never ending perpetual flow of endless rivers of information which, as the song says, just keeps rolling along. It is not uncommon of me to tap into more than a dozen so-called information sites even after an extensive bout with my home delivered copy of the New York Times.

I have been a paid subscriber to the electronic Wall Street Journal since it was first introduced and manage to flip through it daily as the first of my computer generated forays into the news of the day. I figure I spend about 45 minutes with the Times, a half hour with the Journal and another half hour running through all the sites I have bookmarked on my computer.

As a full time writer, I spend a great deal of time in front of my computer screen and since I am master of my own schedule, I can choose to spend this much time getting my news fix. If I were a working stiff with a job in an office or a factory, I would be spending time commuting, my mind cluttered with the impending problems of my workaday world. This would also be true if I was a student or, for that matter, a practitioner of any form of labor on any level.

Considering the press of time and the buffet of uses for that time from watching television, to playing computer games, to myriad forms of entertainment, plus the distractions associated with family and other responsibilities, I have been wondering how many people are actually paying more than passing attention to the news at all. Actually I have been more than just wondering, I have been developing a theory based on pure speculation and my own habits, inclinations and observations that there is probably less than ten percent of all adults that pay any attention to the news at all, the large bulk of them falling demographically into what might be described as the mature years.

As for national news, I would opine that most of the sites on the Internet are a traveling road show for the same people, divided into subsets of folks of various political views covering the continuum from left to right. During a national election, this group expands by about five times, persuaded to join in by a drumbeat of advertising and hype that gains traction in the last weeks prior to the national election. Note that I am talking primarily of national news which, by far, occupies most of the Internet sites devoted to news.

All of these sites are mere aggregators of the news, most of it gleaned and sometimes enhanced from the active news operations led by the Times, the Wall Street Journal and the AP with some assist from Fox and CNN and freelance news gatherers who work for various outlets. For the most part the Internet sites, aside from being aggregators, provide an avalanche of opinion pieces offering an endless array of what passes for analysis based on preconceived biases, most of which can be delegated to very few categories, but all subject to the various spins perpetrated by their authors. Hence my references to the many ways to skin a cat.

These cat skinners are ubiquitous. Often they quote each other to prove their analysis creds. They have become a vast punditry, vying for attention, ladling out their convictions like gobs of sticky molasses. They beg for comments which come in various forms, encouraging conversations, more opinions, offering more and more ways to skin the cat.

I keep wondering where all these comments come from. Who has the time or even the inclination to ponder all this alleged wisdom and insistent critiques of this and that policy, this and that instruction of what will work and what not? It is the traveling roadshow of the faux elite who truly believe that the eyeballs they attract are making on impact, although on what is subject to endless speculation.

My hunch is that the level of attention on these sites is bloated, overhyped and suspect. For some like The Huffington Post it strikes me as something of an ego trip for Madame Huffington who seems never to have encountered a policy with which she didn’t agree or reject at one time or another. She is merely one example of hundreds too numerous to name. Indeed, even advertisers have caught the skin the cat syndrome and, I suspect that they too will find that the attention span and word overload will eventually prove debilitating to their pitch for eyeballs.

The cacophony is mind numbing and the Tower of Babel seems to be growing exponentially into an infinite wasteland. Of course, I am part of the roadshow, this crowd of cherrypicking news addicts and policy wonks who flit from site to site like bees among the flowers.

I’m beginning to think that all this bloviation is hazardous to our political health which seems to be declining precipitously despite all the digitized sturm and drang racing across our computer screens.

The problem it seems to me, is that while all these potential cat skinners arguing about the most efficient way to part the feline from his furry exterior, the pussy of the Cheshire variety sits comfortably on his branch exhibiting his cryptic smile and watching the human animal chase around in circles sniffing for their lost tails and knowing in his ever beating heart that no one will ever come up with the best way to skin his species.

In their desperation to shore up their price points, they are overlooking the habits of their most passionate customers, their readers. The fact is that their most dedicated readers, those who buy most of their books, fiction, non-fiction, instructional, back lists, front lists and best sellers are not interested in purchasing a basket of distractions. Their primary interest, their principal motivation, is for the reading experience only, the content provided by words read in isolation and silence, not video, not telephones, not music, not games, not a tsunami of apps.

When the dedicated reader enters a traditional bookstore, he or she is searching for a book, unadorned by other potential lures to their attention. They want the reading experience, whether it be a flight into the imagination provided by story tellers, or instructions on how to improve one’s life or care for their pets or offer varying points of view on politics, spirituality or whatever.

What Apple has created on its new iPad platform is a potpourri of lures and distractions that is technologically dazzling, offering infinite entertainment choices packaged for easy access, but it diminishes the exclusivity of the written word which is the principal reason why people buy books. It can be argued, of course, that books are presently only one among many choices offered to people in the real world and it has always been thus. What Apple has done is create a virtual living room filled with every conceivable way for a person to fill his or her time, a virtual media world.

But of all the media being offered in this marvelous package, the book is the most time consuming, requiring far more intellectual concentration than any of the other media geegaws offered in Apple’s virtual entertainment center. Perhaps I am making a biased judgment as a dedicated reader (and writer of books) who purchases books by the armload and stores and reads them on an electronic reader. As a dedicated reader, I am very mindful of how much I spend for the content I desire and enjoy the size and portability and ease of purchase of my current electronic reading device which has become my companion in all of my travels.

Sure I like the movies, make phone calls and access apps on my iPhone, including the App that allows me to continue reading my Kindle book on the Apple iPhone. Of all the electronic devices I own, I spend more time reading on my portable reading device than I do with any other instrument. Would I schlep around an iPad if I can get my reading fix from another more convenient portable device? I very much doubt it.

Of course there is a place for the iPad. The fact is, I am a loyal Apple fan and have long ago switched from a PC to an Apple, but as a dedicated reader, the iPad does not serve my most passionate need as a reader. Making the book an also-ran in a sea of other electronic gizmos will, in my opinion, not be the panacea the traditional publishers are looking for.

As an author, I have been a pioneer in the e-book revolution. The earliest meeting I attended with people gathered to promote the vision of the future for the e-book was ten years ago. Most were techies and start up hopefuls. I was the only author in the room. Since then, many were bloodied and bruised and opted out of the battle.

Last week I attended an e-book meeting sponsored by the Authors Guild. The audience was packed with authors. There was standing room only. Four panelists: a hopeful e-book publisher who was a former top gun of a print publisher, an executive of a major traditional publishing company, an author and an agent led the discussion.

They grappled with the new realities of the economic paradigm, talking about royalty splits, strategies to bridge the gap between print and electronics and how they planned to confront the future. They talked about the coming battle between traditional publishers, copyright holders and backlist disputes of ownership. The weakest link in this process was the author, a wonderful writer, but quite confused about her future. In fact, they were all sincere, baffled and understandably clueless.

The e-book publisher, a former power in the traditional industry hit the nail on the head. She told us that we are in the midst of a revolution.

With Apple about to plant its e-book flag and Amazon changing their pricing structure and going APP-wild and SONY refining its approach and numerous tech companies invading the e-book reader field, it should be apparent to everyone that the day of the printed book is kaput. Take a deep breath, gulp if you wish, that’s the future. I have been arguing the point as an author for a decade. I have been pummeled and assailed by every counter argument conceived. So far, history has borne out my vision. Big deal. It was a no-brainer.

The window for the printed book is closing, but there is still a window and it might offer some sunlight and ventilation for a few years going forward, but the end is in sight.

The print publishers are losing their monopoly on content, distribution and marketing. The big box bookstores will slowly implode. The method of branding an author via the traditional media will disappear as the paper media collapses.

The big author brands so carefully constructed will fade away like old movie stars. Imagine what will happen in the textbook field. How would you like to be a backpack manufacturer?

What we will be left with will be millions of digitized books able to be downloaded on numerous devices, mostly portable, flacked and promoted on millions of websites, a cacophony of voices in numerous languages that will make the Tower of Babel seem like a quaint outpost on Mars.

As every publisher knows, the way an author gets real traction is by word of mouth, but that requires a starting point, a seed. It has to be planted. Someone has to tell someone. How will anyone be heard above the chatter?

How then will the author, the creator of content, fare in the coming e-book stew. Note that I am talking here about all types of books, from works of the imagination to instruction, opinion and analysis in every genre that imparts information and knowledge. Essentially book to reader is a one-on-one communication system. Author to reader. Mind to mind.

When I first advised the people at SONY who were developing the first e-book reader, I urged them to create a dedicated reader with no distractions, no bells and whistles, no e-mail, no video, no phone, no texting, no music. I was basing my advice on a very personal view of reading. When I read a book I want to trance out and concentrate only on the author’s work, his or her story, knowledge or instruction.

I think I lost that battle. The trend will be to create a kind of portable living room with all the devices of entertainment, communication and instruction contained in a single device. This will, of course, make it harder for the author to reach his or her reader who must navigate through a galaxy of temptations and lures competing for his or her attention.

From the device maker’s point of view, why not give the purchaser the widest range of options? After all, one might argue, the author is still competing for attention in the real world. Unfortunately for the author it is just one more challenge to be faced. How can his or her work be compelling enough to capture the reader’s attention and, like a fly fisherman, find the right fly to hook the trout? This will be the primary fact of life for authorial survival.

At the Authors Guild Meeting, I asked the panelists: “With the monopolies of content, distribution and marketing disappearing, what can a publisher do for the author when the e-book revolution has transformed the traditional landscape?”

The answers were, to be kind, less than satisfactory. With the implements of branding fading and all the other publishing monopolies disappearing, what is going to happen to that business? One might take refuge in the fact that the branded author still has a long way to go and might find his perch in cyberspace, but what is to become of the millions of other authors who have not found a way to the branding trough?

The brutal fact is that the traditional publisher will have to morph into the e-book world if his business is to survive. Because the publishers and authors have been late to the e-book table they have not yet learned how to react. For many it will be too late.

As for the e-book publisher their stated desire to remarket old books is a noble effort but, in the long run, considering the notorious short historical memory of most people, a fickle public and a youth market whose historical memory is next to nil, they will have a hard time to be profitable as a third party marketer.

Besides, Google will one day have digitized most books ever printed and eventually take their piece of the distribution dollar. Unless they are stuffed with enough cash to promote their books, the chances are that the hardy band of new e-book publishers will become appendages of the big e-book distributors like Amazon, SONY and perhaps a reconstituted Barnes and Noble and an aggressive Google. Nevertheless I wish them all the best of luck for their hopes and dreams and their courage. Perhaps they have a business plan to shorten the odds, although the legal ramifications could be costly and inhibiting.

Still, it is quite true that the traditional publisher holds the present advantage of knowing the reading marketplace, the trends and current reading tastes, the contemporary genres that people want. They have been tracking the literary consumer for ages and cannot to be counted out completely…not yet. Unfortunately,they haven’t been quick enough to arm themselves for the revolution and their bottom line performance report card to their mostly umbrella corporate bosses will not encourage their future. The far away bean counters will be less than sympathetic to the plight of their business wards and will likely throw them under the bus at the first signs of sinking profits, if any.

The result of all this chaos will be the empowerment of the author. As he sees the publishers lose their ability to find an audience for his work, he will have to find a way to empower himself in the wild and wooly cyber battlefield. If he expects to make a living in the hazardous one-on-one communication system of the written word, he will either have to find a way or be forced to keep his day job.

Of course, it is easier said than done. No one has yet come up with a workable solution for the individual author to cut through the cacophony. Numerous entrepreneurs offer ways into the magic Internet kingdom, but they are vastly overrated and unproven. Some are outright scams. The number of authors traditionally published and wannabes is staggering as they compete for the reader’s attention and pocketbook.

The funnel is clogged and the strainer useless. How will an author find anyone to read his work? The answer, if there is an answer, will be found in cyber-niches, conglomerations of niches, families of related websites of like interests through which authors will gain an audience. For the author replicating mega bucks of the recent past will probably be an illusion.

Indeed, authors of the future will probably have to create their own publishing vehicles, yet to be defined, and reach out into the vast morass to establish their readership. Perhaps they will ally themselves with other authors seeking like-minded readers. One can only speculate. That sound you hear is authors, traditional publishers, new e-book publishers, agents, proofreaders, artists and anyone who has been involved or who aspires to be involved in publishing trying to figure out what comes next.

For my part, I call for authors to mount the barricades. They are the royal shock troops of content. It is time they found ways to discover their true economic power in this new world and come up with ideas and instruments to dominate the battle. They will have to do for themselves what others have done for them before the revolution. All future monetary splits should favor the author first. Sorry, I offer no panacea, only attitude. For authors, I suspect it is time to take control of their own destiny.

Yes, the device boys and girls will do battle for market share where price and ease of access will dominate the fray. The dedicated reader will, despite gaggles of naysayers, survive and proliferate as a vast new worldwide literacy expands beyond one’s wildest imagination. And there is cause to hope that our youngest generation will discover that their search for distractions will become boring and repetitive, and they just might return to reading as a way to truly understand what they face as human beings in an ever expanding complex real world filled with confusion and chaos.

I had two motives in mind. I wanted to be sure my books never went out of print and was looking ahead beyond my lifetime to a reading public that I felt certain would exist in the eternity of cyberspace. It would be hugely immodest of me to claim that I was the first author in the world to do this, but I didn’t know any who had. Nor had I encountered any in the organizations I joined that were pounding the drums for content digitization.

I was well received by techie audiences, but not by the publishing community and dedicated readers who were less than enthusiastic about my predictions and were highly critical of my observations about the future of the e-book. Publishers thought my prognostications laughable and insisted it would be many decades before the e-book would take hold as a viable economic paradigm. Some said the e-book had no future.

Nobody would read on screens was the prevailing opinion of many of the groups I addressed. I would often direct them to observe their children and grandchildren who were getting their information on computer screens from infancy. They would nod their heads, but were unbending in their criticism of the possibility of habitual screen reading. Some were hostile, as if their hostility would somehow inhibit the growth of the e-book.

A number of intrepid souls continued to have faith in the e-book future. One of the most persistent and imaginative pioneers was Steve Potash, whose Cleveland company began pushing the notion of e-books on floppy disks many years before the term “e-book” was coined.

If anyone deserves the credit for keeping the e-book notion alive and betting the st0re on its future, it was Steve. Indeed, it was he was who rallied the troops behind the big e-book push that began in 2000 at a cocktail party cheerleading launch, which I arranged at the Century Club in Manhattan. Steve was indefatigable in keeping the e-book concept alive while waiting for technology to catch up with his enthusiasm. Steve’s company is the primary supplier of e-books to Public Libraries and he continues to be the prime mover for the e-book idea.

As for authors, they are, in general, the most non-business orientated group in the world and they had no interest in the subject. From author’s groups I got only ho-hums and zero interest. Pay attention guys, was my mantra. Your future is at stake. The one- on-one communication system of which you are an integral part is in rapid flux. Your readers are migrating toward the Web. Wake up.

Then came SONY with the Reader, which they launched in late 2006 and promoted at the International Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas in January 2007. I spoke at that launch along with my friend Nick Taylor, former President of the Authors Guild (see picture). My advice had been sought by Daniel Albohn of SONY, who was working on convincing publishers to make their books available for the Reader. Like all pioneers he was having a tough time convincing publishers that the e-book was the inevitable future for the industry.

He, too, was persistent and believed in the e-book as a concept and was able to enlist numerous publishers to enter the cyberspace future and was instrumental in kick starting the project for his company. Indeed, he was a true believer.

The SONY launch was the opening gun in the e-book juggernaut. Then came Kindle and it is now apparent that every major electronic company is jumping into the fray with both digital feet. None of this surprises me. The traditional publishers and the big box book retailers had their heads in the sand about e-books and are now playing catch-up, although it must be apparent to them by now that the paradigm for their business is changing rapidly and, sadly, they have not yet come up with a big replacement idea to keep their business economically viable.

Having gained some degree of entitlement from having recognized the shift to electronic reading early on, I offer here some further observations on the future of the e-book enterprise. I hesitate to call them predictions, despite the fact that I have complete faith in my own certainties. Here goes, for better or for worse:

The most cautious industry prediction is that there will be 16 million electronic readers by 2014. I would double that figure.

The major worldwide publishers of paper books along with the big box bookstores will morph into other business entities through mergers or other creative ploys and find different ways to monetize their vast libraries of content.

The methods by which books are promoted and best sellers created especially via mass media will be severely constricted as newspapers and magazines migrate to the Internet.

Getting the word out about new books will be a monumental challenge as more and more information niches are created to disseminate news and reviews concerning books.

Creating a mass readership for authors will require rethinking old methods and, of course, relying on creative innovations yet to be devised.
As always, word of mouth will remain the main tool to promote books, but its enhancement will be severely limited by the shrinking of the mass media which often provides the spark that lights the fire in the first place.

The monopoly of promotion, marketing and distribution enjoyed by publishers and big box bookstores will decline and eventually disappear as new methods will be found to promote and distribute books mostly via Internet sites and direct mail, which will also decline largely because of rising costs.

Among the rising tide of innovations will be the empowerment of the author who will take greater and greater control of the destiny of his or her work through alternative publishing methods. These will include creating his or her own publishing umbrella or hooking up with the major e-book distributors like Amazon and other partnerships. This has already begun.

By digitizing all out of print books, Google will become the primary source for publishing backlists and books which have long disappeared from public libraries and many personal collections. I’m not sure how it will affect author oriented book publishing, often referred to as vanity publishing, a term that may lose its meaning in the future as authors become more involved in their own marketing.

Public libraries will continue as an essential service to communities in numerous ways, but will change the methods required for their traditional role as a free distribution center for content.

Textbooks will be delivered almost exclusively through electronic means creating a new paradigm among textbook publishers and makers of backpacks and other related paper book services in the education field.

I know that these predictions are a big gulp to swallow and I could have guessed wrong in some instances. There are always unintended consequences, new refinements in technology and other esoteric or unknown factors that will intervene as the e-book business evolves.

But one thing is absolutely positively certain. The e-book will transform the publishing industry. In five years its old business paradigm will be unrecognizable.

Oh yes, there is one more certainty. Content, the product of man’s creative genius in every aspect of intellectual endeavor will continue, as always, to enhance, inform, and contribute profoundly to our lives.

As someone who has been wrestling with the idea of keeping my works “in print” for more than a decade and has attempted to keep my authorial name viable via the opportunities afforded in cyberspace, I will attempt to wade through the mucky underbrush and offer my own assessment of the process. Bear in mind that I am an author not a lawyer.

The bottom line is that Google will digitize all out-of-print books both in copyright and out of copyright, published by, one assumes, companies or individuals, whether still in existence or long gone. Most of the books will be “orphans”, the product of long dead authors and disappeared publishers that have been moldering on the shelves of libraries, public and private.

How far back they will go is anybody’s guess. My assumption is that Google will begin the process in the English language and go from there. Indeed, Google’s maw is infinite and it will undoubtedly attempt someday to put every book ever written in every language into its digital coffers.

For the author or his or her heirs, the process is a cause for celebration. The fruit of their mind, their writing and their good name will find its way into a data bank. Their work will indeed be rescued from obscurity, neglect or anonymity. There is a provision for the author or his or her heirs to opt out of the registry of author royalty recipients if they so choose . If the authors are registered, they will share a royalty with Google, who will, of course, have what could amount to a virtual monopoly on this vast cyber library.

Google’s investment in the process will be enormous and, realistically speaking, it is doubtful that any company presently constituted will expend the energy and investment required to back this vast chore. Google’s financial recoup strategy will be through advertising and sharing in the royalties of those digitalized books that will be bought. In my opinion, it will be an eventual bonanza of enormous proportions. Knowledge and information is a valuable commodity and bound to attract entrepreneurs with ideas beyond one’s present conception.

After all, Google is a business, a public company, and quite obviously it sees in this move an excellent financial opportunity. While they might couch this idea in high- minded terms of being a boon to humanity, which it is, the business aspect cannot be ignored. In my opinion, the risk for them will be well worth the reward.

As for the individual authors and their heirs, the financial benefits will be more problematic. Those books containing passed over but valuable knowledge and missed innovation will undoubtedly attract consumers. Marketing by interested parties, meaning individual authors, rights holders and publishers will be critical and expensive.

Fiction writers like myself might find miraculous resurrection based on unpredictable and unintentional consequences. Such a hope has very long odds even if the living authors or their heirs are willing to risk making a major investment to re-acquaint a fickle public or to revive an author’s name long forgotten by a living generation.

The Authors Guild and other organizations who were adversarial to the Google idea at first did negotiate a royalty settlement that seemed fair to authors, although, in my opinion, few, unless they can enlist marketing skills that are costly and innovative or through as yet unknown miraculous events, will ever see much in the way of royalties.

That said, it is better for an author to have one’s works alive and available, then dead and forgotten. Yes, Google is bound to recoup its investment and probably make a respectable, perhaps a giant sized profit. Good for them.

In many ways, what they are doing is astonishing and bold, and for an author, dead or alive, it is a gift that is priceless. An author’s work will be accessible and swiftly available to anyone who is interested, whether by accident or design Only an author knows how difficult and all-consuming a task it is t0 write, the hours of sweat and toil, the research and energy required to produce a book. Most come on the scene like a butterfly and quickly disappear into oblivion. No longer if Google’s plan goes ahead. If the planet lives so will an author’s work.

Every author who ever struggled to create form and content to an idea or a story through words should applaud Google for its courage and innovation. They stepped up to the plate and are taking the risk. Let them reap the rewards.

I’m not quite certain I’ve got it right or considered all the ramifications. I speak as an author delighted by the prospect. I hope that all issues can be resolved and move this remarkable task forward.

Such an innovation was, of course, inevitable considering the astounding success of electronic books and its various delivery devices, led by Kindle and the SONY Reader now penetrating the market. It is certainly worth the experiment, especially for instructional books where movement might be helpful to explain the text.

Indeed, I can understand the marketing concept. Let’s attract book straying younger readers who are habitués of the short video format of YouTube and texting and try to win them back to reading longer works, meaning real books that have been the staple of the industry since Mr. Gutenberg came up with movable type. By real books, I mean traditional “content”, whether distributed via electronic text or through the printed page.

The concept, as it evolves, might be a way to partially fill the hole developing in the publishing business during this transitional phase between the decline of the paper book and the rise of the electronic book.

But for the dedicated reader who glories in delving into the world of fiction, and is the core consumer of works of the literary imagination and responsible for the bulk of adult fiction sales, I doubt if the Vook will penetrate this group. I base this assumption strictly on my own experience as both a reader and a writer of such works.

This does not mean that there might be a growing appetite for the Vook among those who yearn for the next new thing, and there is a good chance that it might become a profit center, although I wonder about its long term durability.

Speaking for what I believe is the majority of dedicated readers, I do not want my reading interrupted by an intrusion on my imagination as I immerse myself in the author’s story by someone else’s idea of how the characters appearance, background and reaction to whatever turn of events the author may want us to follow and understand.

The author’s purpose in creating his or her story is to bring us behind the scenes of a character’s life, his or her thoughts, emotions and an understanding of why he or she is acting in a way that motivates the action. It is exactly this insight that motivates the dedicated reader and gives literature its life force.

When reading a work of fiction, I want to imagine myself what the character looks like to me, what the environment in which these characters operate appears to my mind’s eye, and what and why the character portrayed is thinking while he or she acts.

I don’t want a middle man, via a video clip, actors and contrived sets, to tell me how to see the author’s story. In my opinion, such an intrusion is a diminishment of the author’s intention and waters down the reading experience. It suggests putting a steak in a blender and drinking it instead of getting the real thing, sizzling in bulk on the plate.

Having had three of my books made into films, I offer some modest authority on the process. Filmed content has its place. It can keep you interested for a couple of hours, even enthralled, but no matter how you slice it, it is not the real thing, meaning a true rendition of the author’s intent. Frankly, as a dedicated reader, I prefer the figurative movie in my mind, based on the way my imagination “sees” the author’s work.

This may be a convoluted way of expressing my point of view. As an author of works of the imagination I am obviously biased and conflicted, perhaps even somewhat stiff necked in my opinions. Bottom line: The Vook might work well for others, but it won’t work for me.

I doubt it will make younger people, addicted to the short blip, become dedicated readers, although they certainly might buy the idea at the beginning, perhaps long after. Brought up on low attention spans, this demographic is always in danger of enthusing mightily then coasting quickly away looking for whatever else is coming down the pike.

After all, this group has certainly bought into the “graphic novel”, an idea I personally could never embrace since the product strikes me as a comic book in a reincarnated binding. Having grown up as a pre-teen on comic books I can’t quite embrace it as serious fiction despite its pretensions, nor does it absorb my interest. Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but having once read bible stories in classic comics garb I can’t bring myself to take it seriously.

I know this will offend devotees of the genre, but I suspect that the dedicated reader might eschew such a contrivance, despite its obvious success. There is certainly a fertile market out there for this kind of “reading.” Indeed, its popularity, judging from the way it’s eating up book catalogue and shelf space, seems to be burgeoning.

As for the dire warnings I have been hearing for years about the declining reading public, especially among young people, I have always rejected such alarms. It may be that the offerings are not attractive enough to induce the younger people to step forward. Who knows?

As many of us know, the quality of a thing is not always to be judged by its popularity. For example, while I congratulate Dan Brown on his popular success, I wish I could be complimentary about its quality. In my opinion, the characters are cardboard cutouts, the narrative drive is B-movie exploitation, the clichés are beyond count and the mystery seems stilted and far fetched. On the other hand, the hype was beautifully executed and if money is the great measure of success, then good for Dan and his publisher.

Hell, I bought the book for my electronic reader and slogged through it determined to show my loyal support for a fellow author. Indeed, many of my publisher and writer friends believe that anything that brings people into the reader’s tent is a plus. I suppose the business bet is that the Vook will also increase traffic to the tent. It might.

As for its contribution to the wonders of books consumed by the dedicated reader, I doubt it will make the slightest dent.

Unfortunately, for those authors and their copyright heirs who see themselves as potential financial beneficiaries, I would suggest they don’t break out the champagne.

The primary reason for those books to be out-of-print in the first place, with few exceptions, is because they were deemed by their original publishers as a no longer promising investment, taking up precious warehouse and catalogue space. This is not to say that they did not merit preservation as viable entities, perhaps masterpieces, but for a variety of reasons, some patently unfair, they were relegated to the so-called dust bin of the book trade.

There were also many books lost to posterity when their publishers expired through death or business failure or simply got lost in the shuffle of history.

In many cases, these books do enjoy a modest life-cycle in second hand bookshops and Internet used books dealers. In libraries, they are eventually discarded. Libraries rarely rebind old books anymore. No additional royalties are ever paid to authors by any of these existing venues.

What authors can expect from this massive digitization is, above all, availability. The out-of-print books will join the millions and millions of digitized books in cyberspace, tiny particles in a vast crowd of text, novels, plays, poetry, and textbooks on every subject known to man, the contents of countless libraries. To quote the great Bard, “words, words, words,” an avalanche of words. It will be a Tower of Babel reaching to infinity.

With this endless rejuvenation will come the hopes of living authors, the heirs of dead ones, and other assorted claimants that they will enjoy an unprecedented revenue flow from readers who are just aching to download out-of-print books on the devices that are now exploding worldwide.

By what technical miracle will these digitized books come to the attention of the potential reader? This is the key issue for those who see in this process resurrection, rediscovery and perhaps, a big perhaps, some revenue flow.
As an author of works of the imagination, novels and shorts stories, I rescued my books from out-of-print status a dozen years ago by having my rights returned from the many publishers involved in the original publications, both in English and foreign languages. I resurrected them in all digitization and print formats and they are, of course, available now wherever books are sold.

My objective was to keep my authorial name alive in the only venue that can guarantee, at least theoretically, perpetual survival—the Internet. The objective is to keep the brand alive for as long as possible hoping that a new breakthrough book or rediscovery of an old one will create interest in all of my past works, which will never ever go out-of-print and, with luck, be recycled into movies or capture the imagination of future generations. Everyone has fantasies, hopes and aspirations. That is mine.

The problem is how to find a way for these works to rise above the incessant chatter, to be noticed, bought and read. That is the central challenge for both the author and the publisher, finding readers in an environment that has become a patchwork of a jillion niches.

With mass media outlets in print and television which can set the marketing fires ablaze with their reviews and best-seller lists declining precipitously, one can speculate with reasonable accuracy that they will slowly disappear as mass communication portals. The once dominant newspapers that were the target of choice to disseminate news and cultural happenings will morph to the net, shrunk to niche proportions along with a vast array of competitors that will splinter any attempt to make a big blast marketing push for a single book.

Marketers in the near future will be faced with how to carpet bomb the niches to gain attention, a challenge of epic proportions. All of the creative juices of the advertising and marketing world are attempting to meet this challenge and few have come up so far with an economically feasible plan.

Book publishers use the mass media to ignite the spark of word of mouth, which is the way most books gain real traction. Sometimes it happens naturally, albeit miraculously. But with the big box bookstores wrestling with present and future decline what will be left is the Internet which, so far, Amazon has mined successfully to sell its huge basket of books through its enormously successful portals. But when the time comes when the original kindling, no pun, of the mass media slowly loses heat all the Internet portals selling books will need to revamp their focus to satisfy the swiftly growing e-book audience. Of course, none of this will happen overnight, but my own best guess is that it will, indeed, happen sooner rather than later.

Publishers, too, will have to reorient their marketing strategies as they are faced with a cyberspaced distribution setup. Undoubtedly their strategy for survival will be to hone their communication skills and use the money saved on warehousing and printing to carpet bomb the Internet to gain exposure for their books. It seems a logical ploy but no one can be sure it can work successfully in such a moving target environment. Nevertheless, they will have the bucks to experiment.

Perhaps the day of the best-selling author will expire, lost in the Tower of Babel of the future. Branding authors will be harder and royalty advances will, as a consequence, decline. Serious novelists bent on a lifetime career and financial stability will have a hard time adjusting to the new reality.

Internet bookstores will depend strictly on volume and price wars are sure to proliferate. Publishers, who still control the commercial content gateway, will use the Internet to publish more and more digital books to chase their cash flow. Certain genre categories like romance fiction, mysteries, science fiction, series books and others will probably do well on the Internet although they, too, will run into problems of scale as more and more content comes into the infinite digital marketplace.

For the individual author, which is my focus, the challenge will be monumental. Can the major publishers one day discover the technique of carpet bombing the niches and get the word out for their authors? Or will they abandon their reliance on their few star sellers and bow to the lure of the niches by increasing their content output in every genre and category?

Will the individual author who tries to beat the odds through self-publishing rise above the chatter to gain enough audience to sustain themselves economically? At this moment there are thousands of sites offering self-publishing and promotional services to writers, ignored by the commercial publishing community, who thirst for self-expression, ego satisfaction and dreams of literary celebrity, fame, and fortune and who yearn to make their mark on an indifferent world.

The publishing business is not alone in gaming the future revolutionized by digitization and the Internet. Yes, fellow authors your books will never go out of print ever again, they will be available. That is no small achievement.

Reading is a two way communication system. This means that creating the text is only half the process. The challenge is to connect the two halves. It will not be easy.