Michael Martine asks the question, “Are e-books dead?” It may seem like a crazy question to some small business owners who are just figuring out to how build their first website. You may be planning your own e-book some time in the next year or so. Should you?

Michael brings up some interesting points. Yes, it’s true that many of the Web’s leading marketers are building membership sites. That seems to be the way things are going. But those marketers are largely people who have been marketing online since 1995 or before. They have years of work ahead of the rest of us. Their business models have advanced well beyond what can be expected for most small business owners.

Her’s an analogy you’ll love. TV viewers spend millions of hours every year watching their favorite television shows. But radio isn’t dead. People still listen to the radio. And what about this: The Internet has spawned into a global powerhouse of business and entertainment, but people still watch millions of hours of television every year. DVDs didn’t kill videos or movie theater sells. In fact, some of the greatest grossing blockbusters in history have occurred after the advent of the DVD. So emerging technologies rarely kill older technologies.

E-books are a great way to communicate with your target audience. You can teach through e-books or use e-books to pre-sell a service or product, as Michael alludes to in his blog post on the subject. You don’t even have to write the e-book yourself. You can have a ghostwriter write it for you and you just take care of the selling part. How’s that?