Day: January 16, 2010

Chicago Library Is Threatened

Chicago Library Lower Right
Chicago Library Lower Right

Earlier this morning, we talked about how Libraries and book stores are going to go away. Can’t predict when, but it will happen.

Unless Libraries and bookstores reinvent the book paradigm.

They will either become victims or victors to creative thinking and shifting consumer demands and trends.

While today’s first (this is the second) jeffnoel.com post is only a few hours old, this jeff noel One-Take-You Tube video dates back to August 20, 2009, nearly five months ago.

I was simply walking down a busy Chicago street, on the way to the Willis Tower (Western Hemisphere’s tallest building), and stopped, looked across the street at the Chicago Library, had an epiphany, pulled the camera out on my pocket, took a deep breath and here’s what happened:

Eight Posts Yesterday

CAUTION!
CAUTION!

Blah, blah, blah, right?

The Internet’s only Five-a-Day Blogger”…..

It started as a 100-day challenge to become a better writer, after a Father told his young son, “If you want to be a better reader, you should read a lot.”

So what happens yesterday?  Not five daily blogs, but eight.

Recently, had a discussion and we talked about the future of books:

  • Books will be relics on display in Museums
  • eBooks will dominate
  • Kindle will destroy the publishing industry
  • The publishing industry will watch it happen
  • Librarians will lose their jobs
  • Unless they become Cybrarians
  • There were 177,000 books published last year
  • People think it’s hard to write a book
  • Authors think their book will sell many copies
  • Barnes & Noble will go out of business eventually
  • People get ready (Bob Marley reference)

“Books” will be written one day at a time. In public, for the public.

Books will be free.  Writers will be poor. And writers will come to realize that there are far too many choices.

A whole new paradigm is being created.

One page per day, almost like reality TV.  People will read blogs, and over time, they will have “read a book” and not even know it.

Eventually, this new paradigm will give way to the next.