When Amazon introduced its Kindle for PC application on November 10, 2009, the digital book revolution reached a milestone and came of age. From that moment on, any PC running Windows software in over 170 countries gained instant access to Amazon’s Kindle web pages with the power to browse, sample and purchase digital books and to read those books on that computer. Prior to that day, Kindle books could only be read on Kindles, iPhones and iPod touches. Soon a Kindle for Mac application will be released to complete the highway of global digital book distribution.
While other digital book systems, formats and readers exist, the digital book revolution topography will experience one more profound change when Google opens its own digital bookstore in 2010. Currently called Google Editions, digital books will be able to be downloaded to any device with a browser. At that moment, two behemoth corporations, Amazon and Google, will dominate and control the most significant change in the delivery of the written word since Johannes Gutenberg invented moveable type in 1439.
In one stunning flash of electrons, books and the wealth of ideas they contain have gained instant distribution in a way man has not before been able to do with the properties of the physical book. No longer limited by gravity, the written word will begin to swirl around the planet not constrained by language or geography. In the greenest of all greens, a digital book plucked from the virtual sky transmits the essence of the human mind and spirit without the destruction of natural resources in the process.
And, Stay Thirsty Press and Schiller & Wells, Ltd. are at the leading edge of this digital book revolution by publishing digital books with great content not restricted by category or subject matter. Stay Thirsty Press published its first book, Mrs. Beast by the acclaimed author Pamela Ditchoff in March 2009, and in the ensuing months, Stay Thirsty Press has become the imprint for veteran, award-winning authors. Schiller & Wells, Ltd. became the second imprint from Stay Thirsty Media and published its first digital book, FORTY YEARS LATER by debut novelist Steven Jay Griffel in October 2009. Founded to foster author–publisher partnerships, Schiller & Wells, Ltd. is dedicated to publishing deserving works of fiction and nonfiction by new authors, and notable works by scholars. Although the ink on our biography is still “wet,” invention and change is in our blood and the speed of this revolution nourishes us every day.
In the coming months and years, both Stay Thirsty Press and Schiller & Wells, Ltd. will continue to seek out and publish digital books with superb content in a host of popular languages. From fiction to nonfiction, from scholarly to self-help, from English to Spanish to Japanese, Stay Thirsty Press and Schiller & Wells, Ltd. are digital pioneers helping to settle the frontier and to write the history of the digital book revolution.
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Stay Thirsty Press and Schiller & Wells, Ltd.
