Social Networking

In the world in which we write (and want to sell), the future is online. If you look at Barnes and Noble, take a mental snapshot and compare it to the way B&N looked five years ago. The amount of space dedicated to books is shrinking. There are now games and even cooking equipment where there used to be books.

Let's face it, paper and fuel are now both commodities. And they are where a lot of the cost of the book comes from. To print any significant number of books, a deep and complex supply chain is required, from acquiring the resources to put the book together, to getting them to the bookstore (then paying for the utilities and people at the bookstore).

I'm not sure what the future holds, but I know it's different than the present and a lot different than the past. Kindle (Amazon's book reader) has all the buzz right now, but I can't see the return on investment on a $350 book reader that doesn't do much else.

So as computers and cell phones and MP3 players continue to merge into hybrids, I think the future is there. If you can buy a book for seven or eight bucks, rather than $25, then read it online, you can keep it without filling up a bookshelf. Of maybe the future of books is a Netflix model, where you check out a book online, watch it, then check it back in and get the next book in your queue.

And don't forget about the extras that readers will expect, much in the same way views expect extras on their DVDs. The extras aren't mandatory, but they'll provide a nice discriminator for those who include them.

This is a time of great opportunity. People have been preaching revolution since the beginning of time, but we may be on the cusp of one now. If not, then the pace of evolution will continue to increase.