I want you guys to take a look at something. It’s an online preview of a novel written by a friend/fellow writer, Matthew Talamini. I can’t show it to you here, which you’ll understand as soon as you see it. So follow this link and then come back.

Whuddya’ think?

Yeah, it is really cool. And it is incredibly possible that we will eventually see books this way on a regular basis. Blows the mind. Already, some magazines and newspapers are offering articles like it. (I don’t believe there has ever been an entire book like this, however, which leads me to…)

What I want you to notice, besides the envy and worry rising in your little writer/reader/publisher heart (embrace what comes, people!), is the innovation. The forward-thinking. The sweat and blood that began with a crazy dream, a dream that made sense with the future. No, not all of us–or perhaps any of us reading this–have the unique talents and abilities to make a flying-bits website (that’s a technical term, there), but I would think that we each have some skill set that would enable us to embrace something about the future and jump on the bandwagon early.

I suppose that’s why it’s important to keep up with the field. Keep reading trade mags and trade books. Keep reading books in your genre. Pay attention to what is happening online, in the news, in other media. And then create. Brainstorm. Dream. Meander a little. You see, one of the coolest things about indie-/self-publishing is the ability to move so much faster than traditional publishing. Yes, it does take time to write something, edit something, and get it out there, but meantime Simon and Schuster is sitting on some great idea with their finger in their nose and you’ve just gone from conception to publication in less than a year. Which makes us, the indie people, the perfect candidates for seeing a trend or a need or a desire or a technology in the culture and bam! delivering.

Not that Talamini is going the indie route. But even authors looking for book deals have to cobble together their own platform, nowadays. (We’ve gone over and over this.)

Because sometimes it pays just to be the first person doing something.

And sometimes it pays to do something really well.

And sometimes it takes both, multiple times, and perspiration and time and luck. So go on out there and write an entire book without the letter E, or address the increasingly tenuous profession of journalist to the Middle East. I’m jumping on the Wattpad bandwagon, vlogging, and pitching a concept for parallel novels to some friends. Just do it fast, and take yourself seriously, and finish what you start. Talamini’s site didn’t just make itself, you know.