Saturday 14 January 2012

451 Degrees F

I was going through some of my old news stories this morning, and noticed one that talked about Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 finally becoming an e-book. Now when one considers the theme of this novel - state suppression of thinking, overall control of society, big brother, and ultimately the burning of virtually all books in existence it seems rather odd that his book was never digitized before (at least legally) and released.

It also brings to mind ideas of publishing and whether it is better to publish strictly electronically, traditionally, or a combination of both. Writer John Scalzi's first book "Agent To The Stars" was originally published through his blog and after it became very successful he was picked up by a major house. Scalzi has gone on to write numerous books, and is responsible for the "Old Man's War" series, and others.

We as a group talked about variations in published a few times through the Yahoo list, and at meetings but since that time we've acquired a number of new people so I thought it would be a good idea to open up the topic again. Now I'm not a good resource on what people have done with regard to publishing in the past but I don't recall anybody saying they were strictly doing the on-line method, most of us seem to be heading towards actually books, etc.

TTFN

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous16/1/12 06:13

    I think with the state of the industry right now, it just makes sense for writers to spread their nets wide, whether that means subbing to agents, as well as traditional publishers, e-publishers, indie-publishing...

    This is the time to get a great back catalog of manuscripts ready, which means WRITING, WRITING, WRITING (says the woman who hasn't done a pebble's worth of work (and begs illness as her excuse)).

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  2. Al was telling me Bradbury told the publishers "no freakin' way" to e-books, and they essentially told them it was that, or they wouldn't renew his contract.

    I HATE watching this, just the way I hated watching the demise of record/CD stores and video stores. There are ome of us who don't want to join Netflix. I only rent movies once in a while.

    I LOVED walking into a record store (shopping OR working in one), and especially busting the plastic off a new LP or CD, reading all the liner notes, checking out the artwork etc. You don't get any of that now.

    Pretty soon, book stores will go that way too. And I will be one BITCHY lady when that happens, because they're my favorite places on earth. Pretty soon, antique stores will be the only places to buy books. :(

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