Publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin
This post will discuss a realization I had even before this morning’s news about the developing e-products scene. I’ve always been a skeptic about enhanced ebooks, based on seeing my hunch that they wouldn’t work come true 15 years ago with CD-Roms. But it is increasingly obvious that CD-Rom type thinking will work very well for kids’ books. In fact, I’m beginning to think that enhanced ebook or app-type delivery could overwhelm books as a container-of-choice in a pretty short time. Single digit years.
authors won’t matter
unless they have really strong contracts, copyrights, etc.
because with enhanced books, the story won’t matter; the characters won’t matter; the writer won’t matter. all that will matter is if the story looks cool. like anime. or other cartoons. kids will download stories for a buck because the characters look cool or are tied into another product (hopefully, cigarettes (-: ).