New Site! Book Roast!

Some very smart and humorous bloggers have begun a new blog called Book Roast, where relatively unknown authors can be found discussing their books with anyone who wants to connect with them.

This is exciting to me not only because I count these bloggers among my friends (even though I've never met them in person) but because it's an exciting step into what I think the future looks like for authors. Last week over at Nathan Bransford's blog, there were three days of lively discussion on how epublishing and ereaders and ebooks (god, how I hate these eterms, but they get the job done I guess) will affect the print publishing industry.

There is much angst and gnashing of teeth in the print publishing industry now. Steve Jobs says people don't read any more. The Kindle is gaining a small but loyal following. Energy prices and environmental concerns are driving hard costs up. Borders has reported financial difficulty. Independent booksellers seem to be disappearing at an alarming rate (at least in my region).

That's why the publishing industry is scared. But they should be scared for many other reasons as well. Rampant globalization is pressuring language barriers, and the internet is spreading information faster than print can keep up. Asia may be a big driver as their economic might increases and they skip a huge print industry and go straight to electronic formats as battery and solar and low-energy technology improves. Publishers, squeezed tighter and tighter, are doing less to publicize new books, forcing authors to be their own publicists.

All these things, I think, are conspiring to change, in a fundamental way, the act of authoring and selling books. The change will likely be subtle, over a decade or two, but it's already coming. And Book Roast is one of those signs that some authors are morphing with the market already. Book Roast should be encouraged and fostered, and we should all be interested in how it works out over time. Although it's not "the new model," I think it is, in a small way, what Salon.com was to magazines when the world wide web first caught fire (not literally, of course).

Anyway, go visit!