As I am writing these words I am mindful of a fanciful Arab proverb which says “Those who foretell the future lie, even if they tell the truth”. I guess, in a way, the proverb is right. The future is always so fluid and so uncertain that it can only be read truthfully in retrospect.

Take the case of eBooks for example. Touted as the saviour of the publishing industry and the democratising force in publishing, in equal measures, they have been used to call the death-knell for paper books so many times before that now, when it happens, hardly anyone bothers to listen. Yet eBooks are, despite the odds, beginning to make headway in publishing. More and more people choose to read one on Amazon’s Kindle, their smartphones or PDAs. The shrinking circulation of newspapers is promoting alternative, wireless, mobile delivery platforms as the format of choice and the inexorable march of technology appears to add its own pressures to the narrowing down of time. The arrival of the moment when eBooks will be the only viable route to publishing and publication.

This begs the question. Where do we stand at the moment? Where exactly are we? We have seen that in a vey short time in the past twelve months eBooks have been made available on the iPhone, Amazon Kindle and countless smartphones including the Blackberry and Treo smartphones. The Sony eBook Reader has gone through several updates and now, adding to the pressure (and choice) Borders, the bookstore chain, is launching its own UK-based eBook edition called Iliad.

While calling books ‘dead’ may be premature still and the Arab proverb regarding foretelling the future still holds true, it is also evident that something is happening here and that something now has enough ‘smoke’ to allow us now to predict a little about the proverbial ‘fire’.

The future, where books are concerned, is clearly digital and for the most compelling of reasons: accessibility and cost. No one who wants to read a book, or a newspaper for that matter, wants to have to wait anymore for that book to get printed, delivered to a warehouse. From that warehouse delivered to a bookshop and then bought from there during regular shop opening hours. This antiquated and now, quaint, business model is on its way out. Books are now commodities delivered almost instantly upon purchase or delivered upon demand.

Those who want to read one want one on holiday, on the move, in a quiet place where the mood has seized them and they want to have as wide a choice as possible at as best a price as possible. This is exactly what eBooks provide with Print-On-Demand (POD) books coming a close second. Cost also plays a vital part in the decision of publishers to jump on board the digital technology model. Whether they are delivering eBooks over a wireless network or Print-On-Demand books which are delivered within a couple of days of having been bought there are substantial reductions to be enjoyed on costs traditionally associated with the physical printing, transportation, storage and delivery of books.

The truth now is that whether you decide to bring your book to the market as an eBook or you decide to go down the self-publishing digital printing route, the web and its attendant digital technology act as the great democratizing force in publishing we always hoped but dared not completely expect they would.

The Web Direct Studio company Blog is penned by a number of our in-house staff from our different areas of activity. They write anonymously in order to free their range of expression, particularly when it comes to criticizing their sector of activity or making observations about their job. They work under a simple edict: What you say must make sense and must fit in with the tone of our online business. Apart from that they are the ones who choose the topic they write about in each Blog post.