It is all well and good for librarians, publishers, and other professional bibliophiles to rave and rant about publishing, ebooks, DRM, and other things that we love and hate, but it is something all together when regular readers have the same conversation.
Sarah at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books will be speaking at O’Reilly Tools of Change conference on changes in the publishing industry. She asked her readers what she should include, what their concerns were, and what they wanted publishers to know and boy howdy did they respond. BSTB is not a blog with retiring violets for readers. The comments are thoughtful, smart, funny, and I hope that the publishing PTB are paying attention.
Not surprisingly, they bring up every issue I have heard librarians grumbling about as well. One thing that I realized as I read the comments was that people do realize and are concerned with the same issues that we are and for the same reasons. I have occasionally felt like we (librarians) are talking to ourselves in an empty room, but this makes me think the room may be the crush of the Season. It gives me hope that the publishing industry can still choose to listen and respond better than the music industry when faced with similar issues.
–Jane, her bookshelves thank her for buying a Kindle