Make Your Way 6, Schulbuch mit Audio-CD und CD-ROM

Read the text and choose the correct answers to the questions that follow it. 29 1 When Stephen King announced he would release a story exclusively in digital form and exclusively via the internet, the story spread like a virus over the Web. Television and radio quickly followed. Never before had a story about electronic media made such an impact. “Riding the Bullet” was advertised everywhere. Grand- mothers heard about it on their radios. No one could log on without seeing links. The TV news featured the story for days, morning TV pro- ducers fought to interview King’s publisher, even the New York Times ran a review. “It’s a new book – and you can’t get it in bookstores,” announced one newsreader like some scientist in the 1950s predicting a future in which you wouldn’t need ovens or refrigerators. Like a King story itself, it had all the right elements – a futuristic sheen, a triumphant hero, the promise of a revolution. 2 Publishing history shows that the publication of “Riding the Bullet” as an e-book was nothing new. Authors have been releasing electronic work without a print complement for years. But this was the first time an author as big as King had attempted to bypass traditional publishing methods. However, King had the support from his publishers as well as booksellers like barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com . 3 But he isn’t the only big name to publish his book in an unusual way. John Grisham, perhaps the only writer in America as famous as King, recently began offering his new novel as a magazine serial only. No book, no Web. Instead he chose to publish it in the Oxford American, a little-known Southern literary magazine. Unlike King, he didn’t have the cooperation of his publishers. But the press ignored Grisham. Two best-selling authors toss coins into the fountain. One hardly hears a sound; the other’s creates a tidal wave; massive press coverage and 500,000 copies of the book downloaded. 4 The difference, of course, is that King chose something new. And with newer models, Americans seem to take an all-or-nothing approach. We downplay developing technologies until they reach critical mass, then we do a 180. MP3? People will never give up CDs. Digital music? Who wants to listen to an album at their computer? E-books? “You can’t take them to the beach or the bathroom.” Not that this has stopped lots of authors from putting chapters of their books on Web sites. We just hadn’t noticed them. But then King arrives and suddenly e-books are everywhere. A tale of two authors 69 3 Extensive unit 3: I love books Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv