Ten years ago, I digitized all of my then published novels and short story collections. There were twenty odd then. There are now thirty and counting. All had been published by mainstream traditional publishers and required getting rights reversals from all of them.

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.