A new age of publishing

The rapid advances in technology have interesting consequences in the area of book publishing. In the earlier part of the year, Amazon brought out its e-book called Kindle on which you are able to read books that can be downloaded from the internet. While the screen is only 6 inches, I found it quite readable since it replicates a paper printed book. Its real strength, however, lies in your ability to download the latest books from Amazon.com in a few seconds and that at a sale price almost half of that for the hard or soft cover books. The sheer convenience of this has led me to read even more books that I normally do. Kindle has now gone international and their e- reader is available in a large number of markets outside the US.

And now there is another twist that is even more fascinating. Publishing. Kindle provides an avenue to publish your own books directly and to sell them on the Kindle store. So now you can write your book, upload it on to the Kindle bookstore, set a price that you want it to sell for with no directive from any agency. Your e-book can now be read by anybody who has a Kindle worldwide at the price you have set. And all this can be done within two weeks and without waiting for arrogant publishers who often keep aspiring authors on tenterhooks for almost an year.

This new world of book publishing is likely to gain even more adherents as other agencies are rapidly producing their own e book readers and their own bookstores. The famous US book chain Barnes & Noble recently released its e-book reader called Nook and both Apple and Microsoft are likely to enter the scene in early 2010. Thus e-books will now be available around the world at a touch of button without the heavy cost of postage. Many classical books can be obtained for a song. For example you can obtain the entire works of Jane Austen for less than $1.

As is usual each new technology brings its own particular set of issues. In the case of e-book publishing, the real problem becomes marketing. There are so many e- books that are now being published on the internet, that it is difficult to decide which unknown author to read even if the price of the book is only $ 0-5. Yes, there are a large number of books that are available free.. I am sure though that it is only a matter of time that the internet will give birth to critics who will review these books and publish their comments to encourage new writers and to provide some avenues to determine the quality of these books.

But it is a uniquely democratic breakthrough and one which as a budding writer I heartily commend. You can start by encouraging this trend by reading my latest book on your Kindle –“A Passion to build” for only $ 4!!