Writing in The Independent, Joy Lo Dico points out that while publishers are starting to get the fact that they have to pay attention to what's happening in the digital world, it doesn't seem to have registered with most writers yet.
Of course there are exceptions in the non-fiction realm. notably Stephen Fry, Jamie Oliver, and Ricky Gervais, to name a few. But in the arena of online fiction, there hasn't yet been a breakthrough success. The article identifies some reasons:
"The first of these is that publishing houses lack the drive to fund and develop new online writing and, as a result, most experimentation happens either in groups or at universities. Poole Literary Festival, in partnership with Bournemouth University, held the first New Media Writing Prize this year; Leicester's De Montfort University's creative writing department, in which Pullinger teaches, produced three of the shortlisted authors for that award.
The second hindrance is the reading public's love affair with the book. "The codex book is a kind of prison," says Pullinger. "It is such a dominant idea in our culture, such a beloved thing that we replicated it digitally as an e-book, even though we could and can let it change and evolve."
I remember the day when a book was just a book, you didn't have to call it a codex book. In fact, you still don't, as far as I'm concerned. When some new format arrives, let's give that a different name and keep the word book for books. All right, I feel myself going off on a tangent...
Getting back to the question of digital formats, some people feel that the breakthrough will originate in the world of gaming rather than traditional writing. The article's conclusion: "What does seem to be in consensus is that technology, in particular the iPad, has finally provided a platform that could change the world of fiction. Now all the publishers need is that elusive digital bestseller."
