One of Australia's most talented authors, editor and publisher of dark fiction, Shane Jiraiya Cummings, has been running a series of interviews with various participants of the publishing industry from around the world seeking their views e-books and the future of the written word, be it ink, pixels or something else entirely. He's calling it The Grant Conversation on E-Books, and they have been insightful, informative, sometimes scary, but always entertaining articles.
Well today is my turn, and I contributed an article E-Thoughts for an E-Future were I speculate on where e-books might be 10, 20, 30 or more years from where we are today.
I see a future where e-books come full circle and resemble a paperback. Everyone owns one book with paper. You download an e-book, and like magic, all the pages are filled with your latest book. The cover changes, too, with a blurb, captivating jacket artwork, author and broadsheet testimonials, and a sales blurb. There will even be copyright information, or not, depending on whether your scruples allow you to read pirated copies or not (let’s hope not). Wait, you want to go back and check the last book you read because there is a scene you really like? A quick command and the book transforms again because you have thousands of books in the memory. It looks like a paperback, if feels like a paperback, and hopefully the resolution is just like paper, but it’s an e-book. It might even come with a bookmark that even if it falls out tells you the last page it was in. The book might even read to you, and you can choose whose voice you want to hear it in (think of your favorite, sexiest movie star and you’ll see what I mean).
Read the rest of of my entry here, and more insightful articles on the same topic on Shane's website.
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