Former Newspaper Man Warns Publishers

In a new essay, Brendan Sherar–the founder of Biblio.com and former new media director of a newspaper–warned literary types to pay attention to digital books to avoid the same fate as newspapers.

In his essay, Sherar listed nine important questions that booksellers, publishers, and authors should answer before somebody pulls the rug out from underneath publishing. GalleyCat added one more: How much is an Amazon Kindle worth?

Here’s an excerpt: “So, lately, I’ve been getting nervous when I hear people dismissively say, ‘Oh, people will always want the printed book. They’ll never want to read books on computers.’ I’m not going to debate herein the truth/untruth of such a statement, but the sentiment really bothers me … Seriously, folks, the future of books is being decided now, much like it was being decided for newspapers 5-7 years ago.” (Via jafurtado)

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