What does the writer want?

The first, and possibly the most important question that a creative individual ought to ask is what do you want from a digital book?

If that answer is an adoring audience, or to be rich, or to get laid, then put this book down and become a rock star. It’s a hard road, and you’re going to have to learn to play an instrument (your voice is an instrument, by the way), but you’ve got about as much chance of achieving those goals in music as you have in digital books, and the food is better.

If you want digital to test you, to give you a means of reaching interested readers, or to create new ways to tell stories, or make beautiful things, then keep reading.

Before we go any further, we’d like to lay a few myths to rest. They’re not myths in that they’re imaginary tales of gods and monsters, rather they’re a Barthesian model of dominant ideology. They’re a third order of signification that are very rarely challenged, because culture take the denotation and connotations associated with digital and technology for granted. Because we don’t take about dominant ideologies, here goes: