Will Your Book Compete Well in the Competitive Reading Age?

Thursday, March 4th, 2010 | Posted by: Andrew Kent

We’ve all watched newspapers, magazine, journals, music, and television undergo radical surgery as they’ve been shoved into the digital pipes ala the poor victim in “Fargo.” Over the past two years, books have been thrown into the digital chipper, and with similar results — prices for e-books have been cut to the bone, digital distribution is sprayed across the web.

And we end the “Fargo” analogy there.

For books, the stakes of digital distribution are about to change. Authors have been excited by the prospect of e-books — they can distribute their works quickly, set prices very low, and reach broad audiences with measurable results.

But all these lovely notions of the digital age are about to be shifted dramatically by a shovel upside the head.

Or shall I say, an iPad upside the head.

Reading is a different kind of activity. It benefits from concentration and isolation. The Kindle is a single-use device that fits with how people read novels and literary fiction.

But the Kindle is about to meet the iPad, and it will lose.

The emergence of the iPad means some victories for authors — competition has forced Amazon and others to make pricing concessions, and a sensible model of working with authors is taking over — but the iPad will also force authors to compete with music, the Web, movies, games, email, and applications on the same device.

The question is — Does your book compete?

Does your book cast enough of a spell to ward off the temptations of the latest Tarantino extravaganza? Can it tantalize readers away from a YouTube clip of LOL cats? Will it withstand the onslaught of email reminders chiming through the reading experience? Will it defeat the charms of that “Guilty Pleasures” playlist sitting oh so close to the books app? Can it even beat a worthy Solitaire application’s simple vices?

Your novel will have to compete differently in the coming competitive reading era.

The continuing consolidation of computing functions into devices like the iPhone and iPad means that books could lose their special place in our readers’ lives. No longer separated by covers, no longer protected by the steps of isolation that accompany a retreat into reading, the book will be just a click away.

And so will everything else.

So, be prepared to think differently about your e-books. Over the next few months and years, your books will no longer be sanctuaries unto themselves, protected from the distractions of modern life.

They will be check-by-jowl with games, movies, browsers, applications, and music.

How will they do?

Write like you’ve never written before. It’s the only chance we have!