AUSTIN, TX: I drove right on by the Texas Book Festival this weekend on my way to hang out with the Austin Sketch Group at "The Hideout" instead, where they were closing their latest art show with a quiet lunch party. The Austin Sketch Group was offering free food and free box wine. Hair of the Halloween dog! The Texas Book Festival was offering a hundred card tables full of despair.



I squinted at the Book Festival tents in the distance, and made a remark to my friend Chris about how the Texas Book Festival is probably the single most depressing place in the world.

"Didn't Laura Bush start that thing?" asked one of the other Sketch Group fans, eating a delicious piece of free fried chicken.

Didn't Laura Bush kill her first boyfriend in a head-on collision in high school by running a red light? I wondered about the healing powers of literature. About negligence, guilt, and atonement.

By skipping the Texas Book Festival, I missed the spoooooky Halloween panel called "Are Books Dead?" where MediaBistro's Ron Hogan and representatives from the Austin company LibreDigital showcased LibreDigital's new "AllAccess" ebook delivery system. I looked it up later. You can check out a demo here and read excerpts from David Wroblewski's "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle."

Their new "AllAccess" system allows you to READ AN EBOOK IN WHATEVER FORMAT YOU WANT!

From LibreDigital's press release about their new "AllAccess System" (coming in 2010):

"When consumers purchase eBooks, they want options to be able to read them on the device of their choice - whether it`s an eReader, computer or mobile phone," said Russell P. Reeder, President and CEO of LibreDigital, Inc., an emerging force in marketing, publishing and digital content distribution. "With our AllAccess technology, we make this possible - a benefit for both consumers and the book-selling industry."

Pretty neat; except we've been doing it for two years now and we provide better formats, in addition to audio tracks and art, so it is hard to get too excited. I guess our "products" are not "for sale."

Later, while waiting in line for the bathroom at a quiet Tejano bar, I asked a big lady with two sets of shoulders what she thought about ebooks. She said she was a grad student in history.

"I don't read books, man," she said. "Not my thing."

"What about the newspaper?" I said.

"I read the news if it is interesting," she said. "But online."

"Would you read books online?"

"Nope."

"What if it was a book your friend wrote?" I asked, trying to be realistic.

"Maybe a comic book," she said.

"What if it was a comic book SCRIPT?" I asked. "But instead of every panel being described in idiotic detail, there are descriptions of scenes, people, and characters -- punctuated by clever dialog!"

She narrowed her eyes at me and laughed at how hard I was trying.

Posted by miracle on Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:50:56 -0500 -- permanent link