Robert Scoble

Hmm, Shel Israel and I are thinking of writing a book. I needed a sign from the Universe that we should do just that. Who is sitting in front of me? Atif Rafiq, general manager, Kindle Direct Publishing at Amazon.

We had a lengthy conversation about the tech industry and especially everything that will change when Google's Project Glass (those wearable computers) come out and we move from a conversational age to a contextual age.

One thing that really has me excited is that we can publish an ebook.

See, the old way of publishing is you'd need to talk a committee at a book publisher into publishing your words. Last time we did that, when we wrote Naked Conversations together, we got paid a nice advance and ended up with about $2 a book (it sold about 45,000 copies so far, which is pretty nice for a book).

Guy Kawasaki told me about the new model, though. Sell an ebook for $3 or so, and keep the $2 without having to talk a committee into publishing it. Plus, you can do something even more fun. Atif told me about http://www.wattpad.com/ which lets new authors push a chapter or two out, see if it gets any excitement.

This is the new "lean book" methodology that Eric Ries brought to the startup world. Heck, don't start a startup until you know there will be at least a few people who want what you are doing, right? Why not do the same with books?

Anyway, you can follow Atif on Twitter at http://twitter.com/atifatif

Shel, let's talk more about what I learned tomorrow when I get off this plane. Speaking of which, it still is a miracle that I can type to the world from 35,000 feet. Thanks Gogo Inflight!