The technology industry tries to invent a better book. M arcus Colombano, director of marketing at NuvoMedia, has an impressive array of digital accessories spread before him on the table. The size of a paperback novel, the RocketBook is yet another computing product that NuvoMedia hopes to convince us all to add to our briefcases and backpacks. The RocketBook, Marcus tells me, will eliminate the need to tote around a bag full of paperbacks, periodicals and reference texts. Instead, we'll just download all our reading needs into this handy reading tablet.
Books are appallingly expensive to print, inventory, store and ship.
That means new titles must sell well or vanish. Enter technology, whose tentacles of change are finally infiltrating the glacial and technophobic publishing industry. The electronic reading tablet is not the only innovation being championed. If the publishing industry allows itself to be revolutionized, the world may see an unfathomably vast cornucopia of texts, all digitized and archivable, awaiting only paper, plastic or pixels to come to life. All rights reserved.