This is a short history of media. Bear with me, it's worth it. The thing is, a revolution just happened, and I wanted to be sure you were awake.

In the beginning, books were handwritten on scrolls made of leather. These books were priceless treasures, seldom glimpsed, and of infinite value. Most people never bothered to learn to read, since books were rare and work was more important than reading. The only things that got into books were very important things, like sacred texts or royal decrees.

People mainly clustered in groups to hear what these texts said when an authority figure read them aloud.

In the 16th century, Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing presses. To be sure, presses were in existence before that, but the Gutenberg equipment allowed for the relatively cheap and rapid production of books. People started to learn to read. Books were suddenly affordable, even if still expensive.

Books were an individual experience; people read and studied in isolation. Cultures emphasized individualism.

Printing got so cheap in later years (17th, 18th, 19th centuries) that political manifestos, advertising texts, and how-to manuals found their way to print. Then came magazines and novels. Publishing was now an industry.

People mainly still read in isolation.

In the 20th century, TV and radio changed how information got disseminated. Literacy was no longer required, nor was an authority figure. If you owned the right technology (radio or TV set), you got the message, and you could listen alone or in a group.

These "broad"-casters had to develop messages that fit the broadest possible populations. Advertising made this a business and "publishers" got involved in the form of station owners.

Then came the Internet.

Now everything is different. We could talk a lot about the isolation versus community aspects, the resurgence of literacy skills, and the splintering of the broad markets into niches. That's all very nice.

But we're writers. What we have to care about is something I hear almost no writers talking about. What happens to the writer in this revolution?

That's the good news (for writers, at least). In the Internet, podcasting, digital media world, publishers are left out of the equation.

Every other form of media, from ancient scrolls to modern TV stations, require some kind of business entity to distribute the message. The Internet basically eliminates that. Anyone can get on the web.

Not only that, I can set up a $20 website tomorrow that has the same exact "reach" as CNN online. That's an industry term that means that it is accessible to the same amount of people. (Granted, they're not all going to tune in to my website, but I have the technological "reach" to communicate with them.)

When I first started writing, writing was all about finding publishers and selling to them. A lot of writers still look at the writing industry that way. A lot of writers are also poor and browbeaten.

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