Watch those Adjectives

Great article about the changing world of publishing and the coming revolution in e-books. Check it out.

But here's the money graf:

Back when publishing was expensive, agents and publishers were vigilant gatekeepers.  It cost a lot of money to publish a book and publishers wouldn’t make that investment unless they thought the book could sell — or was of such enormous importance that it was worth putting it out.  Amazon can afford to be much more permissive and the distinction between the published and the unpublished writer is about to become much less clear.

Back in the 1990's the college I was working at offered its first class in Digital Photography.  It was titled "Digital Photography."  But that wasn't the real watershed moment.  The class still exists, but they dropped off the "Digital" part, and just started calling it "Photography" several years back.  In the meantime, traditional darkroom photography, which always before was just called "Photography" is now titled "Darkroom Photography" and it's only offered every third semester as a specialty course.

You gotta watch those adjectives people, they tell you where the future is.  Right now the adjective "Self-published" is something of a joke when applied to the profession of author, but in ten years, you know what they will call them?  "Authors."

Update:  The publishing world knows the adjective "electronic" is about to be dropped from "electronic publishing" too.  Check out this article by Amanda Green.