The eBook Summit will take place Dec. 15 and 16. The keynote speakers, to me, speak volumes: reps from Harper Collins Open Road Integrated Media, Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division, Google Books and BBC World News America. Okay, the last is probably a token rep, but the others, it would seem, are desperate to figure out how to make a buck from the shift to digital. The opening line of their ad says it all: New technologies have disrupted the business of publishing. Hm. Ya think?
Nowhere in this “summit” does it address the plight of the author. The real “content creators” who, for the most part, currently slave away at full-time second jobs of writing (inclusive of marketing efforts, which equal the time spent actually writing) for wages people in third world countries would scoff at.
The playing field must level soon, or authors will begin to drop out of the game. Not me, I’m in it because I love it. At some point, though, it needs to be financially rewarding as well. Or the people at the top will likely have to downscale their lifestyles too.
