It's been a crazy summer of way too much travel, shovelfuls of e-mails (if I owe you one, bless you for your patience), marvels, wonders, discovering the Anat Baniel method, ukulele playing (but not with these guys), and dog walking--- and working on the Bhima translation (that page to be updated shortly.)
In the midst of all this, many a time I have wondered, what am I doing as a writer with all this blogging? (I'm blogging Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays here, and over at the new Maximilian ~ Carlota blog on Tuesdays.)
Recently, I redesigned my decade-old website and realized that much of my writing in the past year is not for the printed page--- or, if for print, it appeared (appears) simultaneously on-line (e.g., "Twitter Is" for Literal and "A Traveler in Mexico: A Rendezvous with Rosemary Sullivan" for Inside Mexico). So the redesigned website has a page for my books, and another for other print publications--- and then a page for the blogs, and another for podcasts. I should have added yet another for the videos (right now, these consist of book trailers, but a longer video-story, based on "What Happened to Thelma," is in progress.)
And as for books, from my conversations with friends, it looks like, whether in the iPad or Kindle, e-books are taking over... Right now, only my novel is available as an e-book. There should be news about the others soon.
In another five years I doubt we'll be reading as many books in print format. It's getting interesting as things blend, video and audio and photos just a click (or touch) from the text itself.
One project I'd love to do: the e-book of Miraculous Air with not only text but photos, audio, video, Q & A, a reading guide, and interactive maps (including a map app like the one Julia Sussner did for Impressionist Paris).
P.S. Check out this blog post and this eye-popping talk by marketing guru Seth Godin on the future of the book industry.
More anon.
