As a newly-published author facing the daunting proposition of marketing my book in our 21st century virtual landscape, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of books and the publishing industry in general.
Ebooks increasingly dominate the market, and with the advent of POD (print-on-demand), self-publishing has grown exponentially. Even as they jump on the electronic bandwagon, conventional publishers must deal with a decreasing customer base, and many bookstores face that same problem. And public libraries – in the next decade or two, will such entities still exist, at least in physical form? For those of you who are Star Trek fans, think of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (to my mind the most philosophical of Enterprise captains) caressing that rarest of antiquities – a hardbound book.
