Author: Scott William Carter

Ebooks Are to Printed Books as Airplanes Are to Bicycles

“Kevin Kelly is not a dumb guy — far from it actually. As the founding executive editor of Wired and one of the people who helped build The Well, among the earliest online communities, he has done a good job of seeing what is coming next for decades.

But last year, he had what sounded to me like a dumb idea. Mr. Kelly edits and owns Cool Tools, a website that writes about neat stuff and makes small money off referral revenue from Amazon when people proceed to buy some of those things. He decided to edit the thousands of reviews that had accrued over the last 10 years into a self-published print catalog — also called “Cool Tools” — which he would then sell for $39.99 …”  [Read the rest of “Print Settles into Its Niches” at The New York Times.]

The whole article is worth reading, but I’m not sure why it surprises people so much, even considering the book’s subject matter.  The printed book is a pretty remarkable device:  cheap, portable, disposable if need be, and human-powered.  On top of that, they often have great aesthetic value.  Ebooks are great.  I love them.  But they’re just another mode of conveying information.  The Wright Brothers, who made their early mark manufacturing bicycles, may have launched the greatest technology disrupter of all time with the airplane, but bicycles didn’t go away.  Sometimes a bicycle is just a better way to get around.

The Amazon of Higher Education

“Five years ago, Southern New Hampshire University was a 2,000-student private school struggling against declining enrollment, poor name recognition, and teetering finances.  Today, it’s the Amazon.com of higher education. The school’s burgeoning online division has 180 different programs with an enrollment of 34,000.”  Read the rest of “The Amazon of Higher Education” at Slate.com.

I spend most of my waking hours (and I suppose a fair amount of my sleeping hours too) inhabiting two worlds that have both been heavily disrupted by technology:  1) writing and publishing, and 2) higher education.   SNH provides a road map for how even smaller universities can bet big on online education and reap huge dividends.  There will always be a place for the traditional, straight-out-high-school, student — trust me, no parent wants their kids going to college in their basements — but focusing exclusively on those students is almost always going to be a losing proposition.  Just as in publishing, it’s critical to a book’s survival to have that book available in as many formats and markets as possible, higher education must deliver learning to as many different groups (eighteen-year-olds, working adults, long distance learners) and in as many different formats (face-to-face, online, hybrid) to ensure their long-term success.  Public universities may not be able to turn the corner as fast as a private institution like Southern New Hampshire, but that’s all the more reason not to delay.

Wooden Bones a Finalist for the Oregon Book Awards

Good news!  My book, Wooden Bones, is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in the Children’s Book category.  It’s a pretty broad category, from picture books to middle grade novels.  My book is a short novel aimed at 9-12 year-olds, though I really wrote it for all ages.  Who doesn’t want to know what happens to Pinocchio after he became a real boy?  The winners in each category will be announced on March 17 at a ceremony in Portland.  I won an Oregon Book Award in 2011 for The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys and it was a terrific honor.  And whether I win this time or not, I appreciate the nod more than anything else.

So much of my life as a writer is spent in isolation, hunched over a keyboard in the wee hours of a morning, and it’s nice when every now and then you get a little external confirmation that all those hours of work haven’t been for naught.

From the Video Archives: Lee Child’s Writing Advice to Writers Is to Ignore All Advice

“The best advice for a budding writer is to ignore all advice.”

Child has a lot of words of wisdom (I won’t call it advice or you might ignore it) packed in that short two minutes, but that was the line  I agree with the most. I’ve certainly handed out my share of writing advice, but really, none of it amounts to much. You put one word in front of the other, and if you keep at it, and trust our own vision and your own voice, in the end you might have something good. And if not, it’s at least yours.

And while I’m a big believer in constantly trying to get better as a writer, I also think there are times when it’s best to stop taking writing workshops and stop reading how-to books and stop hanging out on writing-related forums and just do the work.  This isn’t to say you never take another writing workshop again; it’s just to say that there are periods along the way when it’s best to get all the other voices out of your head and just follow your own path.