Well Jobs made it known what he had in mind and now it is our turn to talk about the powers and the liabilities of the one-man gadget world. Indie publishers and authors ought to be a bit concerned about the overpowering of the gadget world by the indefatiguable Jobs. Yes, his gadgets are gorgeous and I own several of them. Yes, the world of gadgetry would die if there were not some of these monomaniacal people around.
My basic problem is the one all of us who care about the adequate distribution of wealth and influence should always be caring about–he has an out of balance influence on how we as writers, publishers and distributors are going to earn some money from the very legitimate work we do.
The kinds of deals he is going to make with, for example, textbook publishers, is going to skew who can make money writing textbooks–again. I, personally, am not all that happy to see McGraw-Hill making deals.
We all have very short memories, unfortunately, I do not. Some things are so egregious in this world that it is necessary to recall them and to help one’s readers recall them too. The McGraw family and the Bush family were close and the former last president and the owner of the company grew up together. Thus when George W. Bush was governor in Texas, he made sure that his former playmate made a ton of money creating textbooks that would fill up the schools in Texas with George’s friends ideas of what should be taught.
There is that side of the equation.
The other side of it is, as anyone involved in e-book publishing can imagine, there is so much one can do to create e-textbooks that will help students learn in so many new and interesting ways. Yet, leaving it up to companies like the McGraw-Hills with their huge corporate profits to maintain means that there will be very little innovation (i.e., risk) and lots of dumbing down in order to make it palatable to the largest possible crowd.
I hope I am wrong about the latter part of my thinking but I am not all that hopeful.
The gadget is gorgeous but it has nothing to say about how it is used.
Deborah Emin is the Publisher of Sullivan Street Press, www.sullivanstreetpress.com
