The Gatekeepers Post has an article with this name today. It’s by Glenn Yeffeth, who is publisher of BenBella Books:
If we consider, for the purposes of this thought experiment, that the majority of books sold in this scenario will be ebooks, the book can be continually updated, and continually current. New video, new links and new features will become standard. Amazon will be selling subscriptions to books, where the new version is sent automatically.
For all books, digital or physical, on-line marketing becomes much more important than off-line. Any online advertisement, press coverage, or blog mention that includes an image of the book cover that links to a buy page is essentially on-line coop. We’ll need to completely rethink the marketing of evergreen books, and our approach to online marketing
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Yes, as a writer there is something in me that’d like to continually revise and update my books in a search for perfection. In a few cases, that really needs to be done. But I suspect that, in practice, such a technology would be a bit like passing out crack cocaine on a grade school playground. A lot of authors won’t be able to handle it.
As a writer, I need to get on with the business of writing other books. I can’t obsess over what has already gone out the door. A process that allows for continual tinkering could make me like the unfortunate J. R. R. Tolkien, who described in “Leaf by Niggle” his habit of forever revising stories and never getting around to publishing them. (Lord of the Rings came out because he had a publisher demanding a Hobbit sequel.) It’s uch better to be a G. K. Chesterton blissfully writing book after book and never looking back.
Just because something can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done. More and more, I’m coming to respect the Amish point of view. They don’t adopt every new technology that comes along. They study it carefully, looking for its negative impacts as well as the positive. We need to do the same with the new technologies for publishing.
–Michael W. Perry, author of Untangling Tolkien and Chesterton on War and Peace
I find this a nonsense article hardly worth commenting on … (but seeing as I am here I’ll go ahead)
What kinds of books is the author talking about ? Do fiction books go ‘out of date’ ? do other categories of fiction ? science fiction ? fantasy ? Romance ? What nonsense.
Only non-fiction books are potentially sensitive to this kind of time dependency. And even then I don’t believe for a minute that readers would be interested in paying for updated versions. They would prefer a completely new book.