Format after Format

By Doyne Phillips, Managing Editor for Southern Writers Magazine

It was 1968, I was a Senior in High School and driving a “67 Chevy Impala. It would not do until I bought and had installed a Lear Jet 8-Track tape player. It was the latest, so I thought, in music delivery systems. I would soon realize in order to hear my favorites I had collected on LPs and 45s, I would have to purchase the same artist’s music in this new format, 8-Track.

This cycle has continued. Records, 8-Tracks, cassettes, CDs and now digitally downloaded. Will it ever end? I don’t think so. I have bought the same artist on each format. The flip side is the artist enjoys new sales each time the new format comes out. What a benefit to them.

Books have followed the same trend. Books have gone from hard copy to paperback. Authors or someone with an excellent speaking voice, like our very own Gary Fearon, present the books by the spoken word on records, tape and now digital. Southern Writers Magazine offers the words of Authors in digital format with Take Five where Authors read their works. Must Read TV shares book trailers with you, much like the trailers at the movies. Southern Writers Radio Show has interviews with various Authors on topics of great interest to writers today. Southern Writers Magazine itself is presented in online format as well as print. It is all done in order to promote and encourage authors everywhere.

What is next? It is hard to say. I have watched car manufacturers discontinue 8-Tracks, cassettes and now I understand they are going to discontinue CD players as well. Digital seems to be the current choice for music and book delivery in the spoken form.  Each change will afford writers another format in which to offer their works to their readers. Another format brings another opportunity. Change is inevitable and Southern Writers Magazine will be meeting the challenge each step of the way.