What I love about country music, however, is the story behind the songs. My favorite songs are ones that have a deeper meaning than the song itself. There's a line in Automatic that says, "Cause when everything's handed to you, it's only worth the time you put in.'
So what does this have to do with books and writing? After listening to this song it got me thinking about a conversation I stumbled upon recently about e-book prices.
Twenty years ago no one knew what an e-book was. There was no such thing as Amazon one-click. Readers thought nothing of going to a bookstore, spending hours combing through books, and then shelling out twenty dollars for a few hours of entertainment in the form of a story. While Amazon and other e-book retailers have opened up the market to authors who may otherwise never have the opportunity to see their stories published, have they also caused writing to be devalued because it's now so easy to access? Because it only takes seconds to download a book rather than the minutes, or even hours depending on how far you were from a bookstore, do readers take for granted the months authors put into writing a quality book?
What do you think? Has the value of books as a whole been damaged by the ability to easily download to e-readers?
