Well, I think that part of this is pure desperation from publishers to publish something...anything...that could possibly sell enough books to turn a decent profit. With the short attention span of today’s population, we’ve gone from publishers selling books to “readers” to selling books to “browsers”. Don’t believe me? Look at the HUGE influx of published books that could only be described as “bathroom books”, written and designed in a way that their optimal use is in the bathroom while squeezing out a loaf.

Makes me wonder when LCDs and wifi components will get cheap enough that we’ll have wall-mountable screens in the bathroom, opposite the commode. That would allow bloggers to skip the publisher altogether and go “direct to bathroom”.[Flush]

Strange how institutions are so inept to change…

...the book writers and publishers, like the musicians and labels, are crumbling into something new. Blogs made everybody a writer. Fruityloops and Garageband made everybody a house/jungle/triphop producer.

The publishers will keep making “books”, despite the fact no one can agree what makes a book different from any other form of written text when presented on glowing LCD panels. After all, it’s what they *do*- print words to paper and bind them. Rinse. Repeat.

Maybe content wasn’t king after all - maybe the medium was king. A book is text on a printed page - almost unassailable. Disagreement is reduced to petty vandalism. But it’s also a book because of it’s physical form: pages bound together in a sequential order.

Television was the visual equivalent of books, whose linear progression was decided by producers and corporations. Viewers responding to television were reduced to shouting into the ethereal vapor of letters to whomever was concerned, or disembodied voices of listless plebeian drones.

Commentary about “Short Attention Span Culture” is mystifying to me, as it seems rooted in the peculiar assumption long periods of time are required for proper entertainment, education, etc.

Back to the blogger-to-book publishers: Why do they insist on taking words from the electronic form and consecrating them in paper?

.......

I thought I was making a point, but probably meandered a little far.