E Books | Barry Eisler and Ewan Morrison debate

Via Radio Litopia

This is a really entertaining debate about the whole e-book thing.

In the red corner is Barry Eisler, a big selling thriller writer who has done well out of Kindle self publishing, though he was already established with 'legacy publishing' before digital arrived.

In the blue corner is Ewan Morrison: Glasgow based author of literary fiction who has for the past year or so been railing against digital and Amazon in particular for the way it is threatening to destroy traditional publishing and destroy literary fiction.

Digital is clearly a huge change for the industry. I'm rather weary of authors bemoaning it and saying it is the work of the Devil and that the Devil's name is now Amazon.

In saying that, there are certainly challenges ahead. Not least for writers who want to make a living out of writing. Many will have to work on their writing part time. Others may be forced to give up altogether. But I'm not sure that is necessarily a bad thing.