Short and to the point as ever with Seth Godin. I’ve been saying for a while that the biggest competition online for publishers is everything else and that we need to respond quickly:
When we juxtapose an ebook with a movie, Instagram or pigs that attack turtles, the ebook often loses.
One of the very real truths of our culture is being hidden in the dramatic shift from paper to ebook–lots of people are moving from paper to ‘no ebook’. For now, this is being concealed by the superreaders, ebook readers who are on a binge and buying more books than ever before.
A lot of readers (big readers) are resisting the ebook. I was at a Writers’ Fest in Waterford at the weekend and almost all of one panel of writers were sniffy about ebooks. Surprisingly they were commercial fiction writers. I thought they would be embracing the possibilities with gusto.
I wonder if this is ‘age’ related Eoin? A very large percentage of my blogging buddies (age 30+ to 45 ish) are all eReader crazy. They all still love books – but most of them have kids and spend all their time taxi driving and waiting around – so the eReader, the Kindle app on their phones and the ease of quick downloads on their laptops is their new best friend. Always with them.