So, 2009 ends with a whine, which is probably pretty apt, all things considered. From my perspective - which is, admittedly, a wee tad biased, it's been a true Annus Horribilis (with options on a 'orrible anus as well) with the constant question of whether my day job will still be there, economic woes, the publishing industry playing lemmings when not doing things that - at best - leave people scratching their heads and wondering where they can get whatever these people were on at the time.
Since I have issues with late nights, I'm not likely to do anything dramatic like stay up and watch anyone's fireworks or anything, unless I get sucked into the current WIP.
So... gazing into zee crystal ball (genuine imitation crystal, $1-99 at Wal-Mart!), what do you see for 2010?
I see ebook readers becoming a more mature technology, maybe one showing up that actually does what I want it to. EBooks becoming more prominent - and more contentious. Someone is sure to try to claim that they own ebook rights for anything they published in dead tree lo! these many years ago, especially if the author has sold the ebook rights to someone else after untold years of out of print-ness (if they haven't already done so, which wouldn't surprise me).
I'm not sure whe
n it will happen, but someone, somewhere, will go big with DRM-free eBooks, and begin the slow cracking of the DRM Curtain (this is a little like the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain, only messier and full of holes - if you know where to look and what to do with the finger you poke through one of the holes). By the end of the 'teens, eBooks will probably be bigger than dead tree, or close to it, and will be predominantly DRM-free.What are your predictions? And how happy will you be to kick 2009 out the door in the hope that 2010 will be better?
P.S. Me being me, I'm a tad reluctant to say 2010 couldn't be worse - if I say something like that, the universe goes out of its way to prove I'm wrong.
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