The Demographics of Change

The Net Generation, as Don Tapscott (author of Grown Up Digital), calls them, are the largest generation since the baby boomers and may dwarf the Baby Boomers in number. They're just entering the workforce now, and they can't conceive of a world that doesn't have an Internet and the tools to collaborate online.

Most important, they consume media differently than we do. When they watch TV, they almost never watch live. TiVo takes care of that. They're natural multi-taskers, with shorter attention spans, but the ability to manage more stream of information at once. While we watched TV passively, they crave the ability to interact.

For us, as writers, this presents an opportunity yet to be discovered. The current model of publishing is changing. Just walk into Barnes and Noble and look at the growth in Manga and graphic novels. Watchmen has been a cultural phenomenon this year. The movie has come and gone, but the book--a graphic novel--is still on the best seller rack as I write this. In 2007, half of Japan's best sellers started as cell-phone novels.

There's a growing disconnect starting to form between writing and publishing. It might not be obvious yet, but it's there. And as the hardware required for the digital world becomes smaller, the need for a middleman to publish and distribute work will shrink, as well. Already, you can write a novel and publish it for Kindle without going through a traditional publisher. How far are we from novels you can subscribe to and read via RSS feed on your laptop or cell phone? In the future, self-publishing could be as simple as updating a blog and making it available to feedreaders.

The idea may seem preposterous. But ten years ago, who would have foreseen the emerging trends of Facebook, YouTube, and the cell phone novels in Japan.

Vast changes are on the horizon, and those changes represent a great opportunity for those willing to work with them.