El Hacker

Vale la pena leer el artículo The Forthcoming Argentinean E-book Market escrito por Octavio Kulesz con una valentía y una lucidez admirables. Octavio describe claramente el letargo en el que está todavía sumida la industria editorial de nuestro país, a pesar de algunos esfuerzos recientes para comprender los profundos cambios que están aconteciendo y luego actuar en consecuencia. Por momentos Octavio parece estar clamando en el desierto pero siempre con optimismo y propuestas bajo el brazo:

In my opinion, given that the migration of the industry won’t come from analog publishers suddenly becoming digital but from new players joining the game, what we need now is a new generation of digital publishers entering the scene and taking over. This will require a big effort from that cohort, but the attempt will be worth making, since what is at stake is no less than the vitality of the forthcoming Argentinean (e)book industry.

The young digital generation of publishers will have to experiment with new formats and with new business models. From my point of view, there must be a viable and profitable pattern for digital publishing content, because of that unquenchable thirst for online texts that citizens have started to show. Certainly, we cannot expect replicas of the old commercial scheme to work as they used to. And I daresay that even some business models related to digital that may have proved successful in the U.S. or in Europe won’t work at all in our region, so the challenge will be twofold: disenthralling ourselves of old paradigms and also doing away with certain solutions imported from the North that as such may do little to improve the current situation. This is something we permanently discuss with my colleagues from the Digital Minds Network: the digital future of emerging countries won’t have quite the same shape as that of America or Europe.

No se puede estar a favor o en contra de la tecnología: es un dato de la realidad. Argentina está bien posicionada para competir en este nuevo escenario, siempre y cuando se anime a jugar, ya que por suerte abunda el talento en nuestras pampas.

Estos y otros temas serán discutidos en nuestra Conferencia Editorial 2010, que realizaremos el 9 y 10 de Septiembre. Y aprovecho para agradecer a Octavio su colaboración con el proyecto.