Where are we going now?

Recent posts from the Office of Letters and Light - the people behind Nanowrimo - Self-Publishing vs Publishing: How To Choose Your Path by Lynn Viehl, and Mark Coker at Smashwords have discussed the ongoing debate between traditional and self-publishing.

Lynn Viehl considers the options as either or and perhaps both depending on the circumstances and the writer making the choices. Mark Coker's posting after the San Francisco Writer's Conference, where eBook publishing held the centre stage referred to a constantly and rapidly changing landscape in the publishing world. His presentation, How The Ebook Revolution Will Transform Your Career, explores ten trends in publishing and how they impact on the traditional and eBook sides of the story. In an earlier post at Smashwords blog and an interview on NPR Mark Coker remarks on the shift in perspective where self-publishing was considered the option of last resort. The refuge of the vain and the desperate, and now the goal posts have been uprooted and appear to be wandering around the pitch. Writers are deliberately opting for self-publishing as a first choice not the last chance saloon, and traditional publishers are trawling through e-published works for the next best seller - the Fifty Shades spectacular last year - eyeing up the also viewed and most download Stats at sites across the net.

Whatever lies in the future and considering the changes that have taken place in the last five years that is a movable feast of the most magnificent proportions; the old way is gone forever. Books will continue to be created and enjoyed, cherished and loved, published and read with every emotion that reaches out from the written word. We will argue over which is best, discourse and discuss the words on the printed page, the iPad, Kobo and Kindle screen, in whatever format we have or favour, and is the truth of it not that we love books -  though undeniably true - rather that in any shape or form we adore stories, and the people who create them; the Writers, of million sellers or for a select readership. The story is what counts and today, writers, along with publishers (self or trad), agents and book sellers are the characters in a story as profound as the impact of the movable type.