It’s hard to see a form of consumption other than the essentials that hasn’t changed over time. Movies for example have gained color, HD and are now actually coming out of your screen with 3D. Music also has changed from fuzzy mono sound into ultra crisp 5.1 surround sound that allows you to hear everything you’d if you were there with the band. But what about books, they haven’t changed.
Books are still the paper packs with words printed on them, and they have been ever since the invention of the printing press in 1440. And the disadvantages show in more ways than one. They’re heavy, limited and can’t change over time, at least not in your favor. No wonder that today’s books are again down in popularity. It all starts with the teens. They’re being commanded to carry all the schoolbooks with them, which are heavy and take up a lot of room. In no way a good introduction to the back-end technology that are shared by almost all published books on the planet.
But since just a few years ago the future has arrived and it’s called eBooks, with endless possibilities. Now finally students and travelers can carry all the books with them without turning into Quasimodo, and for writers it’s a breath of fresh air that finally we can put users in the experience like never before. Today we’re on a steppingstone to the future and that future is looking bright for books. But we need a new generation of authors to trigger it, one that exploits the new possibilities in a way that isn’t about the money i.e. release it as an eBook and charge the same amount, but authors that actually build their novel around the concept.
I think I’m one of those inventors, I think I’m one of the new generation of authors. And it’s crystal clear that making a great eBook just doesn’t start with the aftermath either; it’s a whole new way of writing. We live in a society that operates on small-bits of activities at a time. We check our e-mail (5 min), watch TV (15 min) and then sit behind the computer for our twitter messages (30 min). It’s a far cry from the old world when we’d read for hours, and loved to do just one thing at a time. My books are designed around the new way of living so that you don’t have to worry anymore about “getting into the story” or “decoding the sentence”. Because my books are easy to read and has a story that progresses before your next duty arrives.
But why am I saying this is a thing of the new generation? Well I’ve studied the differences between novels of today and many, many, many years ago, and the difference is striking. In the past authors used words to differ themselves from other people. They weren’t always thinking about the story, but rather focused on making beautiful sentences and choosing the best sounding words every single time. The problem with that is that the audience will often have a difficult time reading the book or worst of all it will force the readers to stop reading and think about the words they just stared at.
My books will always be written with users and technological advances in mind. This means that they will feature an average length of just 30-60.000 words. And I will never use sentences just to show how smart I’m, that’s not my job, it’s my job to entertain my audience. And I can’t do that by making them think about my choice of words.
Lastly I’m the inventor of the experience of my book and I will always want full control over my novels in almost every way. The time is long gone when publishers simply smacked prices of $20 on a novel, now with eBooks I can charge realistic amounts people will feel comfortable with. And those features will highlight a new generation of books, the second generation, the eBook generation.