--- author: '' category: '' date: 2010/07/13 01:35 description: '' link: '' priority: '' slug: BB897 tags: '' title: 'Newfangled horseless carriage: good news for bad riders?' type: text updated: 2010/07/13 01:35 url_type: '' --- Today Argentina's largest newspaper, Clarín, printed a story about e-books titled `"The e-book grows: good news for bad writers?" `_ and it's worthy of comment. First, the obvious: yes, of course it's good news for bad writers, just like the arrival of the internal combustion engine was good news for bad riders, but it's not only good news for bad writers, it's good news for almost everyone. Let's consider some choice quotes from this article: In the last few months those authors previously damned to self-publishing, either by the low quality of their texts of the shortsightedness of the editors, have found [companies] willing to provide them, in electronic format, the publishing denied to them on paper. Well, yeah, since publishing e-books is almost free, yet the prices are substantial, it will increase demand of things to publish, because the margin is bigger. You can "print" hundreds of different books for the cost of a single paper book! So far, obvious but still more or less aligned with reality. It didn't last, though: This progress has its victims. First the traditional editors, who see weakening their power over the selection, production and distribution of books. Whoa, how terrible for them. I can only imagine they feel awful because their jobs are becaoming more or less obsolete. Then again, so did the copyist monks jobs when editors and publishers started their gig. It lasted them 500 years, that's **a lot**. The idea that the free access to social networks turns everyone into musicians, journalists or writers makes headway. At the same time, the role of those who, not long ago seemed called, thanks to their education to channel the development of entertainment, information or culture shrinks. I am completely against the very *idea* of impartial journalism. There isn't *one* impartial journalist, there never has been one, and there never will be one, so why go on with the charade that yes, you are not impartial, but you pretend to be, and we pretend to believe it, and then try to correct your bias when reading... it's tiresome. So I, a perfectly biased guy will tell you: **OF COURSE, YOU SELF-SERVING NIMROD**. Everyone *is* a writer nowadays. An average teenager writes many times more today than when I was a teenager. The main method of communication with peers has switched from oral to written! Yes, we old creeps hate *how* they write, but what the heck, that's because we *are dinosaurs*. You are writing about the plight of buggy-whip manufacturer's middle-management instead of writing about *cars*. Just grow a pair of nuts, say that this scares the shit out of you because you expect journalism to not be a way you can make a living in 20 years ad be done with it. In the meantime, we will all have fun having a wealth of writing (good *and* bad) without peers in the history of civilization.