http://www.libertarian.co.uk/multimedia/2014-10-07-books-sig.mp3
On Tuesday the 7th October 2014, Sean Gabb was interviewed by Mark Cummings of BBC Radio Gloucestershire, the subject being “The Future of the Printed Book.”
Sean makes the following comments:
- Amazon has its current dominance of the e-book market because that is what the readers and writers of books want. Should it ever abuse this dominant position, there are other on-line book sellers – iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, etc – which would grow at Amazon’s expense.
- Sean welcomes the democratisation of publishing that Amazon has helped bring about. Though he has had half a dozen novels brought out by a mainstream publisher, his dozen or so other books would never have found a substantial market without Amazon. He is grateful for this.
- The real problem at the moment in the book market is not Amazon’s alleged wickedness, but the end of the filtering process that the mainstream publishers used to undertake. This kept out a lot of very good stuff, but also kept out a lot of dross. This dross now pours straight onto the market through the Kindle trapdoor. The answer, though, is not to attack Amazon, but to evolve new filtering mechanisms via the market.
- As for whether printed books will survive in the next fifteen years, we are only five years into a revolution the course of which no one predicted. Saying what will happen next is to risk talking nonsense. However, Sean believes that printed books will survive. The Publishing industry wil go increasingly on-line. But printed books will survive, like fountain pens, as luxury goods and as gifts.
See Sean Gabb’s, essay on “The Future of the Printed Book“
Richard Blake’s new book, “How I Write Historical Fiction: Advice from a Practitioner,” is available for pre-order via Amazon.
