One remarkable thing I learned from inverting the publishing process and going with the eBook version of Cinder-Smella: A Timeless Tale of Stinky Feet is that a lot of people, once the book was published in digital form, said to me, “I love it… when is it going to be available in print?”

That kind of took me by surprise. First off, the digital version wasn’t some sort of rough draft; it’s a finished, published, real book. (Honest to goodness.) It’s just an eBook, that’s all, but one which could be read on a Kindle, an iPad, a Nook, a Sony eReader, and on and on and on.

Next, this question wasn’t coming from a bunch of “I don’t even know how to operate my television’s remote control” type of folks; this was coming from tech savvy people who are very much peeps I’d considered “wired”.

(Quick test: How do you know if you are wired? If you read blogs on a ning, there’s a good chance you are – even if it doesn’t feel like it.)

Well, this week I broke ground on getting the printed book into shape. Now, producing a print book was always part of the plan and I am really, really excited about how it’s all laying out. But there is a part of me that just got to taste in a very real way how the all-knowing prophets of the future might be screaming from the rooftops, “The sky of the printed book is falling! The sky of the printed book is falling!” But it’s not.

Indeed, eBooks are growing at an exceptional rate… but they still haven’t penetrated 5% of the entire book market. So while times indeed are changing, times also are not.

And so we prepare for the hardcopy. It’s the same animal but then again… it’s not.

In my last blog post I said that printed books seem to have a legitimacy that eBooks do not. Now, will that change?

Of course. But when?

I know not.

However, lots of folks who sit on book award committees (the ultimate sanctioning body of a book’s merit, in many, many ways – not that I agree, but society certainly seems to buy into it, so I’ll play along for the moment) are already swamped enough with titles to read that have “been published in print form” by a credible institution. The publishing houses – like agencies – serve to vet content in order to arrive at some level of answering the question, “Is this material “worthy”?”.

In other words, prior to quite recently, not just any Joe or Jane could publish a book. (Except through a “vanity press” of course, and those have carried the stigma of “it’s merely a self-published book” for years and years.)

And to paraphrase a friend of mine’s ideas (Clix) any idiot can write an eBook – and many do. (BTW, I think this sentiment alone conveys why Clix and I are friends.) Where are the gatekeepers who protect us from having to read loads and loads of crap?

Well, the entire publishing industry has been fashioned around a system of just such gatekeepers and without jumping through their hoops, one mostly does not get Simon and Schuster, DoubleDay, Random House, Workman, or so on to put out your material.

The editors rely on the agents to be the first round of vetting, sifting the slush pile from the gems. Then the editors-in-chief rely on their own in-house editors/sales team to be the next layer of vetting, via the process of acquisitions. Then the bookstores rely on the publishing houses to determine those books worthy of shelf space (and, in case you didn’t know, end-caps and the such on bookstore aisles are actually paid for by pub houses these days; premium bookstore real estate costs pub houses money… it’s not simply cause someone “likes the book” that it ends up on an end cap in so many stores… it’s because a publisher paid for that end-cap as part of the marketing budget, which is why the rich often get richer and The Sentimentalists (see my blog post from a few days ago about this book) is a bit like a needle in the haystack/lottery ticket of a book. But then again, I believe in meritocracy and if a book is ROCKIN’, the audience will find it.)

All in all, this “new” system of eBook publishing allows a writer to by-pass all the gatekeepers… but that calls into question the idea of, “Is the reason they by-passed the gatekeepers because the material is inferior and it would not have passed the gatekeeping mustard in the first place?”

To wit, a lot of people will publish YA novels in 2011. However, when Disney releases my next new YA novel in July, it will come with the full weight of institutionalized credibility behind it. That doesn’t necessarily mean my new book is actually better than anyone else’s new book – especially the ones written by folks who only publish through digital text and eReading modules – but then again, now that I think about it, I do believe it could be argued that indeed, hey, it really might be.

Having Disney publish my YA book in print form (i.e. hardcover, available in bookstores across the nation, and so on) implies a credibility to my authorship that self-publishing a digital eBook simply does not have.

See, we count on gatekeepers in so, so, so many forms of media. With so much out there, who is going to curate the white noise? Publishing houses have served that role for quite a long time… and brought us a heck of a lot of GREAT books through this process. Without skilled agents and editors and other publishing industry professionals, it’s somewhat like the difference between a New York Times Reporter and Joe on the Street reporting on a story, no?

And so, the publication of Cinder-Smella in digital format calls into questions all sorts of societal presumptions about books, reading, credibility and the nature of “what is worthy of being considered as an award winning text?” I like that.

At some point, years from now, this debate will almost seem superfluous. You’ll know when the Newbery Committee picks something that never saw the light of day in printed form.

I feel guilty.

It’s like I am a teenager who swore their undying love to a prom date and now a new hottie has come along that has caught my eye and I am thinking, “Well, I don’t recall actually getting officially married. And, okay, officially, we’re still going to the prom together but a fella can date in the interim, can’t he? Especially, if he’s willing to allow her to date as well?”

Are you confused yet about the pangs of my heart and lust in my soul ? Well, join the club because so am I.

See, in the scenario above, I am a reader, printed books are the steadfast, well-seasoned girlfriend, and eBooks are the new hottie on the block which have my head spinning – as well as the entire school’s.

Now, of course, printed books will always remain constant and steady and dependable. How can you knock that?

Yet me, as a reader, I am allowed to flirt with eBooks aren’t I? Maybe even have a few serious affairs with them?

Can I have my cake and eat it too or am I a Book Chauvinist oppressing the beautiful feminine spirit of printed books like some middle age reader having a mid-life crisis right now?

The hot and sexy thing who is fun and interesting and filled with limitless possibilities is seducing me and I, Mister Reader, feel akin to a weak male with weaker flesh… and I am succumbing to these tantalizing flings, all the while promising in my heart that I will never really l leave my first and purest love.

Printed book, I do love you! But right now, I want to scoot off to Tahiti with an eBook that resembles more Brazilian bikini than she does one-piece moo-moo.

I mean, WOW… check out that body and those moves on that eBook!

(And do you know what she can do in bed? Let’s face it… you just kind of lay there.)

Oh my goodness, am I losing my mind?

And if I do go off the deep end, does that mean that I can’t ever come to you, my original love?

Will printed books hold a grudge?

Will eBooks prove vacuous and empty and meaningless and shallow?

Am I just a dirty, scorn-deserving old man or has a new young love bloomed?

My heart is torn asunder.

With reading on my iPad, I am really digging it for non-fiction texts because often when I read NF, thoughts bubble up of people with whom I would like to share a thought, idea and so on.

The iPad makes it a one device “bounce over, shoot a quick email, copy and paste passages if I’d like, and then right back to my book” experience.

I love that.( Cause, like I said, when I read NF, I seem to think of other people to whom I’d like to share/connect these ideas to which I am being exposed.)

That’s an unexpected treat for me.

With fiction reading I rarely do that. I am far too immersed in the characters, story, narrative and so on.

NF though is about ideas – and since it taps a different part of my brain, I guess it also taps a different way that I process the information… and want – or do not want – to share it.

More and more ereading and print book reading are becoming apples and oranges.

eReading provides things like video embedded text, hyperlinking, ADD style reading (whereby, I read, check my email, read some more, check a sports score, read some more, buzz in on the news, read some more and so on.)

Print book reading is singular and if I want to multi-task, I need to put my book down.

Fiction doesn’t seem to trigger in me the desire to put my book down to do other things nearly as much as NF does.

Hmm… it’s interesting now that I think about it.

Either way, to remove judgement about either of these two means of reading seems like the best approach to me. One is not necessarily better than the other. (For a skilled reader, that is. For a kid with low literacy skills, learning to concentrate and focus and hold one’s attention for long stretches of time appears very critical to me… I am not willing to throw that skill under the bus for young adults at all! But does it have to be a printed book? Well, it certainly removes the temptation to use the “device” to bounce on over to something else if the device – by that I mean, the book – doesn’t offer any “bounce on over to” function. )

The world is changing right under our eyeballs. Of that there is no doubt.