By Pete Rivard April 10, 2006 -- Oh, I’ve gone and done it now. There can be no denying what will soon be trumpeted from the rooftops. I wrote a textbook. On printing, of all things. Or at least on a printing related subject. What was I thinking? Print is dead! The textbook is a broken, repudiated technology. I’ve just had Thomson Delmar Learning publish something no one will ever read on a subject of no relevance. I could kick myself! I might as well have written a Babylonian grammar text on papyrus. Get out of printing! It’s a trap! It’s a dead end! The Internet won. Blackberry came in second. Oh, pride, thy name is Pete! Who needs a book on Digital Color Correction? Perfect color is automated and assured. Just pick up any magazine or brochure (before they disappear completely from the face of the earth). Every picture tack sharp and beautifully reproduced. Every drop shadow perfectly rendered. Not a skin tone but is luminous and smooth as silk. Superb detail, every last photo. I’ve got to warn all my graduates. Get out of printing! It’s a trap! It’s a dead end! The Internet won. Blackberry came in second. Your careers are doomed! Get into a growing industry, like big box retail. Wal-Mart and Home Depot are hiring. You could make almost half what you’re pulling in now and wear a cool blue or orange smock. Or go into financial services, counseling people on what to do with all the money they don’t make. I need to drive around the upper Midwest to every high school I’ve ever visited and repent my rash words about print careers. I need to call back all my students from their paid internships and see if we can’t get them into the HVAC or Auto Collision programs. Clearly, I’m ripe for an intervention Clearly, I’m ripe for an intervention. And if I need help, all those local businesses that are buying their second iGens—why, they’re downright delusional. Totally drinking the Kool Aid. I’m going to have to tell them that my college can’t continue to enable their destructive, dissolute habits anymore. Apparently, I devoted two years of my life to grinding out so much dog food. Except that I put a copy into both dog food bowls last night and neither Aussie showed any interest. So I’m not sure I get this dog food thing. All I know is what I hear, and what I hear is that the textbook is a completely ineffective and insanely obsolete information delivery device for the 21st century. And you can’t eat it. Double bummer. People are on to me. It’s a known scam to write a textbook and then make your students buy it. A captive customer base. Why, I make nearly three dollars a book! Multiply that times twenty or so students a year, and the mind reels! Sixty dollars straight into my account in the Caymans! Annually! Bwah ha ha ha haaaaaaaaah! Has anyone put an offer on the Dukester? I’ll be needing a yacht. I just checked Amazon. My book’s Amazon Sales Rank is 2,257,932. I blame my publisher. I asked them to call it Harry Potter and the Half-Baked JPEG or Tuesdays in Morrie’s Photoshop Class but they wouldn’t do it. No one would have caught on. Who reads books?