Books can now be on the stands within days from delivery of a formatted manuscript, and often are.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Books are finished.
In the university library, we know when a book has been used in a class or put on reserve... or while it was out, did somebody call it back in. It turns out to be a pretty good indicator of how relevant the work is at that time.
My gut feeling is that paper and ink are going to be with us for a long time yet, and in substantial quantities, though certainly books are now going to be available in other forms.
Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.
Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.
I write a book over a period of months or years, and when I'm done with it, usually another year goes by before I see it in print. It's hard to be patient and wait.
Publishers just want you to write the same book over and over again. But why would I want to do that? It would be like putting on a threadbare dressing-gown day after day.
At the moment, I have it planned as a six or seven year experiment, but the books will only ever appear in bursts like this every couple of years and only with the best quality artists.
It seems the world of book publishing is constantly changing. Whether it was the rise of chain stores or their decline, or the digital revolution... fortunately, we have been able not only to adapt but to thrive.
I'm sure you're aware, with the time it takes to put these books together, everything can suddenly start coming out at once even though I wrote anything between one and five years ago.