Last year I said video would shake the blogosphere, and not podcasting. At the time, a lot of church ministers where going ga-ga over podcasting and the possibility of getting more milage out of their sermons and unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of creativity in the podcasting genre. Video, on the other hand, opened up a whole new world. YouTube and the wide adoption of broadband helped this happen. Its never been easier to post and repost video. This used to be a huge hassle with bandwidth and storage. In 2000 I used to compress my videos to less than 2 Megs and upload them to Apple’s imovie page. They were tiny and they took forever to download. How lame! Glad those days are gone.
For 2007, I think we will see BOOKS.
E-books? Yes, but more importantly, old fashioned paper books will make a comeback. Print to order companies like Lulu.com make it easy and instant to print books. Everyone and their dog will be printing books. Blog-to-book software will change the way we blog, making us think about our blogs as PRE-BOOKS. Photo-to-Book services will make us more serious about our photography and the way we organize it because we will create books with a few clicks. Maybe 2007 will be the year that I finally print out a book.
Also, Google Books is loading up thousands and thousands of vintage books online that give ordinary people access to books that have been out of reach. This will lead to an increase in PRINTING. I would be looking for a decent laser printer if i didn’t already have one. And if i was a business looking to jump in, I would invent a way for people to create their own books from their printers – ie, develop some kind of device that enables you to compile the papers in an attractive and permanent way.
“But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion [to books] is wearying to the body” Eccl 12:9
Books of Blogs? SO 2006 😉
click for (sic)
Really interested to hear how anyone has found the direct blog2book services, and what the prices are like…
LuLu seems to offer some great services, but they have a page minimum which is a tad to high I think (around 100 pages). I and some friends have been hand making some prayer books and things like that and we go WAY below that minimum.
I do think that books are making a comeback, I would say paper in general is (google moleskine GTD hack).
Did books ever go away? Don’t tell my wife, she thinks I spend way too much on them already and would love to have an excuse to cut my budget!
Hah, I’ve been thinking about printing a photo-book for a few months now. I guess I’m ahead of the curve.
actually ..kester . . i am talking more about macro-trends and not what the innovators are doing. I joined Lulu in 2005 and i know you also were early to jump on that.
and i liked your blog-book “Sic” – despite the lengthy comments.
I need to get back to old-fashioned books. I didn’t read enough of them in 2006.
AC
I wouldn’t quite have gone out on a limb to call it prediction or prophecy, but print-on-demand books are definitely going to be on the rise. I was delighted to have published 2 books via Lulu.com last year, on behalf of the private foundation I work for. 1 of those books has over 400 copies in print and in circulation now, that’s been exciting!
actually, the print on demand has been out for a while – i realize that – but what i was getting at ie, the prediction part, was the latter part – the response to google books, and the actualy printing out of google books from the 1800’s and other hard to come by books, and of course other documents on hard copy
i went 5 years as an online paperless office but am now being wooed back to paper
hope that is not an environmental disaster.
but the print on demand is exciting and i am sure the pressure is being felt by the publishing companies.
and i am glad to hear, DJ, that there are people more functional than i that have taken advantage of it.
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Ooh, I’ll be snatching up that link, Victor, thanks!
And yes Andrew, you were right about Videos, though I still enjoy a good podcast; I can be doing chores and such whilst listening to them, whereas video demands a bit too much of my attention, most of the time.
I think you’ll be right about books. I hope! LuLu is right down the street from me, and I hope to get some editing work referrals from them.
maybe you will write YOUR history of the EC through them?
Your prediction seems to be coming true pretty quickly – just discovered that two of my friends are set to publish books this year.
blog-to-book? back to tree cutting? ok, it’s better if it is printed only when ordered, but still… more paper…