When I was a teenager, I remember there was some talk about TV homogenizing America. The prediction was that we would all have the same accents, shop at the same stores, eat at the same restaurants because that was what we saw on TV. At the time, I thought the whole debate was silly. My father still shopped at the same (local) grocery and clothing stores he had used all my life. We knew all the folks who owned these stores, and greeted them by name when we dropped in. And my mother was driving us North for summers in NJ and back South to Florida for the fall through spring and those trips through the SouthEast every year were a revelation to me. Surely, there was no way that TV was going to homogenize any of that!
In the intervening years, I’ve seen that the folks predicting all that weren’t far wrong. Oh yeah, if you swing through Georgia, you’re still going to hear a Southern accent when you drop into a Stuckey’s for some pecan pie. But Wal-mart is everywhere and so is Applebee’s. It is rare for many of us to shop in a locally owned grocery and finding stuff that is made in America can be a full time job, let alone finding a clothing store that is owned by someone you know.
So I’ve been sort of wondering if the e-book movement would have the same effect. Would we all just be finding the same (few) authors–just a different venue? And surely it will take its toll on small bookstores? How can a mom and pop compete with Amazon?
The jury is still out on that one. Yes, many of us writers are getting our start in e. And the NY Times will add ebooks to their best seller list next year but is there really any relationship between those two statements? Is there a way to make electronic books by smaller presses more relevant to a local audience? Or will small e-book publishers just get lost as New York (read that as mainstream) publishing takes over?
If I had the answers, folks, I wouldn’t be posing the questions. But I’m wondering what I as an e-book, small press, writer can do.
There has to be an answer.
Rule of Three 