E-Books...Maybe...

I was talking to some teenie bopper at Best Buy the other day - no choice, she was the cashier - and she made a comment about the Sony Reader I was buying. She said, "One day there will be no book stores. Just people reading with these. Mark my words."

I said, "God, I hope not."

But she's probably right. Sad when a sixteen year old girl can hit such a nail on the head. Meanwhile I have boxes and boxes of beautiful old books that one day kids will look at and ask, "How do you get these into your reader?"

With the rise of ebooks have come the ebook publishers. To be fair, I'm one myself, wearing my Big Kahuna Publishing hat. But unlike me and Penguin Books, most of the suck. I mean, really, sincerely, suck. I guess that happens anytime something becomes cheap to do. Hardcopy books are still expensive to produce in large quantities, so most of them are at least professionally done. But not ebooks. And in the case of digital reading, you really CAN judge a book by its cover. If they look like they were slapped together by a blind one armed tree frog, then chances are the content inside won't be much better.

What will happen if books turn into that? If, just like the Internet, 99% of the non-porn content is crap?

I don't think I could take that. I don't think you want that either. So if you're thinking of publishing your own ebook, do us all a favor, and don't. Or, if you still have something to say, send it to me and I'll work it into something that won't make everyone but your Mom pray for death.