It was in the middle of the 15th century when Johannes Gutenberg brought innovation to the world of printing. Though block printing had been around in Europe for over a hundred years and the Chinese had been printing on cloth since the third century, Gutenberg brought something new to an antiquated and cumbersome process.
The result of his vision changed the nature of communication and became a catalyst during the Protestant Reformation. It put the Renaissance on a much faster track and moved world toward The Enlightenment.
Today, vision and technology have once again joined hands and the antiquated is challenged. While the tide of yesterday's norm reluctantly recedes a tsunami of something new and digital is crashing the beach!
Leading the day is none other than Steve Bezos and all things Amazon. In just five short years digital publishing is heading toward critical mass as the causalities mount. The Closing of Borders is old news, Barns and Noble is in trouble and the coveted Big 6 of legacy publishing is now reduced to 5.
While some say history repeats it's self I don't think that's the case here. My opinion of time is that it moves in linear fashion and therefore can not repeat upon it's self. However, it often gives and appearance of repetition and the reason for that phenomena in this case is simple. Human beings are inquisitive and constantly searching for a way of doing it bigger and better.
Technology and creativity will always feed off each other and in the process something like Google comes along and the world takes notice. It was just a matter time before the computer age produced another venue.
My wife gave me a Kindle for Christmas in 2010 and I quickly saw the possibility for a wannabe writer. I stumbled on a few blogs and learned if you're passionate enough and work hard it's possible to produce a quality product that is easily brought to market.
Joe Konrath and Hugh Howey are big examples of what can happen for indie authors in this digital age. No one saw it coming, but once again technology and creativity linked up and human potential went through the ceiling.
Konrath earned one million dollars in 2013 and Hugh Howey published the first installment of Wool as a short novella in 2011. Popular demand drove him back to the key board where he turned in four more installments and has since packaged the collection and sold the print rights to a main line house, while retaining digital rights and selling the movie option to Hollywood.
Thousands of others are earning anywhere from a modest supplemental income to a replacement income and while that's become old news the current trend is growing exponentially.
History suggest there's something familiar about Gutenberg's innovation during the middle ages. It looked a lot like todays shake up of the publishing industry. Both were and are serious game changers. The former helped ignite the Renaissance and the later... a Revolution.
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