Here's an interesting interview with Stephen King about e books (From The Wall Street Journal):
Why E-Books Aren't Scary
By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
Stephen King has filled HIS share of printed pages: Since "Carrie" was accepted for publication in the spring of 1973, he has written more than 40 books and countless short stories. His latest work, coming Nov. 9, is a collection of four stories titled "Full Dark, No Stars." In an author's afterword, Mr. King notes that he wrote one of them, "A Good Marriage," after reading a piece about Dennis Rader, the "BTK Killer" (for "bind, torture and kill") who murdered 10 people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991. He wondered what would happen if a "wife suddenly found out about her husband's awful hobby."
Mr. King is realistic about where books are headed. In digital publishing, as a writer, he's what might be called an "early adopter." Back in March 2000, Simon & Schuster Inc. issued Mr. King's story "Riding the Bullet" as an e-book that was downloaded from the Web onto hand-held devices or computers.
More recently, Mr. King's novella "Ur" was written exclusively for Amazon's Kindle e-reader when the second generation of that device went on sale in February 2009. In the interview below, Mr. King discusses his thoughts on the future of digital reading and publishing:
for he rest go here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304173704575578241730802982.html
Wow. The Wall Street Journal prints such weighted statements as "Mr. King is realistic about where books are headed."
ReplyDeleteShocking.
Clearly, we can all agree that anyone not fellating their e-book reader right now must be "unrealistic."
Right?
In unrelated news, Rupert Murdoch, owner of the WSJ and known for actively setting the tone of his media sources like Fox News is very keen on promoting e-readers.
In fact, he's worked with Amazon because he'd like to raise the average price of an e-book from $9.99 to $15. (for now)
(psst...paperbacks can be had for much, much less...)
So when a thinly-veiled commercial for e-books is disguised as an article and published in Murdoch's WSF, is anyone honestly surprised? Or do you just smile and say, "oh, those sillies..."
It's not news, of course. Does anyone actually pay attention to corporate media any more?
Great link, Ed. Sociologically, the media continues to be an interesting study.