Digital-wise, author Andrew Lam has split loyalties. The NPR commentator and co-founder of New America Media no longer reads newspapers, preferring to get his news online where he can be constantly updated.  But when he settles in with a book, the author of “East Meets West: Writing in Two Hemispheres,” prefers his words on paper.

There he wants the full experience – “the feel of the book’s weight and the smell of its pages.” “There’s something sensual,” he says, “about reading a novel in the old medium that cannot be had in the new.”

Mystery writer Linda Morganstein – her latest is “Harpies’ Feast” – is also a print book reader but she’s hoping to soon justify an iPad. “When I start traveling more, I’m snagging one.”

With so much change happening in the publishing world, I wondered how far into the world of new media the people who write books have ventured in their personal reading habits.  I’ve been involved in our local book festival and queried a few of the authors who will be there.

Author Don Lattin, who wrote “The Harvard Psychedelic Club” is a former newspaper guy who’s always favored “ink sprayed on trees” but confesses to buying an iPad and now “going through some kind of strange spiritual conversion.”

Then there’s Carolyn Cooke, an O’Henry Award winner whose new book is “Daughters of the Revolution.” She reads books the old fashioned way – “turn pages, write in the margins, and leave them splayed and half-finished around the house.”

Plus, she loves the thrill of stumbling upon a literary treasure that can only happen while wandering around a book store, like “the hole in the wall book store in Nevada” where she scored a John Updike first edition.

Where she buys a book is part of the overall experience. “I usually remember details of the store and then where I was while reading the book. The books themselves are also repositories of personal history,” she says, including remarks, stains, even driving directions she’s scribbled inside.

As for the future of the book biz Lam acknowledges “the bad news, with shrinking publishing houses and out of business bookstores.” But he says for writers it’s an easier time to get published. “If one is determined and with the way books can be printed, a manuscript that in the old days couldn’t find its way to the public now has a better chance.”

Who buys them and reads them is another matter, he says, which relies increasingly more on the promotional skills and resources of the author.

Lattin, whose book tells about Timothy Leary and Ram Dass and the early days of drug experiments, became a believer in online promotion when he posted a video on early LSD research on YouTube, where it got 800,000 hits and landed him an interview on CNN.

Still, the classic author reading at book stores is something a lot of writers don’t want to give up.

“The intimacy of real time cannot be beat regardless of how good technology is,” said Lam. He said, “I’ve been interviewed on Skype before and it’s always a hollow feeling after.”

Carolyn Cooke remains hooked on “meeting people who read, who bring their full intelligence to what they read.” And Morganstein said, “Seeing people in a real setting you see their body language, their expressions, their laughing, dozing, frowning. On the other hand you can do a virtual book tour in your pajamas.”

These writers and more plus poets and panels including one on the future of the book business will be part of a day full of book talk in Santa Rosa at Courthouse Square Saturday, Sept. 24. Check out the schedule at socobookfest.org.

There is one friendly tradition in the book business not yet abandoned by the chaotic upheavals in the industry. Readers still like to meet their favorite writers up close and personal. They want to find out if he talks as funny as he writes. Is she as eccentric as her characters? Is he as swoon-worthy as the photo on the book jacket?

Readers want more from their favorite ones than what they get on Amazon.com which is why personal appearances remain part of a writer’s job which except for the big stars, they do for free.

It is when they get out of their coffee-stained pajamas and go meet their public in cafes and book stores to press the flesh, feed the fans and charm new ones.

This is done in a big collective way at book festivals which leads to my first plug for the Sonoma County Book Festival. (www.socobookfest.org) It’s been an annual event for more than a decade and happens Saturday, Sept. 25 in downtown Santa Rosa.

At one book fest food guru Michael Pollan attracted a swarm of fans that stretched out the library and down the street. Another year Diane Johnson, of Paris and San Francisco, arrived looking very French in an easy non-glamour way. Dorothy Allison drove in from the Russian River to talk about writer’s block.

And this year? There’s doctor-author and literary hottie Abraham Verghese who teaches medicine at Stanford and wrote the novel “Cutting for Stone.” He’s been writing since he was in med school and had his first short story published in the New Yorker.

Joyce Maynard got her first break writing in Seventeen magazine, followed by a piece in the New York Times at age 18, which drew the attention of the much older reclusive author J.D. Salinger. Maynard lives in Mill Valley and has been pumping books and stories out for decades, including one made into a movie, “To Die For” with Nicole Kidman, but people still want to know about the Salinger affair.

Then there’s late bloomer Buzzy Martin of Sebastopol who used to press his self-published book on teaching music at San Quentin to anyone who would stop and listen. Now, thanks to tireless networking and Facebook meet-ups, he’s been discovered by big deal Penguin publishers. Plus there’s a movie – “Soon to be a major motion picture.” It says so right on the cover of his republished book “Don’t Shoot, I’m the Guitar Man.” Buzzy, it is rumored, will be played by Kevin Bacon.

Chester Aaron, a garlic grower in Occidental who taught literature at St. Mary’s College, became the hero of rejected writers when a literary agent told him he was too old for her to waste her time on and he wrote about it in Poets and Writers magazine. That was back in his 70s. Chester, getting the last laugh at age 87, is still writing and publishing.

Afghan-American writer Tamim Ansary first came to the book festival after 9-11 to provide some intelligence on Afghanistan and Islam. Seeing as how we’re still pretty stupid on the subject, his new book “Destiny Interrupted,” a study of Islamic history, could be another timely contribution to world understanding.

Yiyun Li grew up in China, lives in Oakland and this year made the New Yorker list of “20 under 40” young writers. Given her relative youth you’d expect that she would embrace all the new technology. Yet, Li recently wrote in the Sunday Chronicle’s book section that she’s taking a hiatus from the Internet. She’s given up Twitter and Facebook friends in favor of old ones. Like Iris Murdoch and Tolstoy. Seems Li would rather spend her time reading books.

And isn’t that a nice story?

Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com

Nobody used to care if an author was telegenic, or photogenic for that matter. You didn’t need to be a hottie or a hustler to be a writer. Just tell a good story, get it published, do a few author readings and hope for it to hit the best-seller list.

Except for blockbuster authors who achieved star status, the book business was more about getting attention for the writing than the writer. Most authors stayed somewhat hidden. You saw their photos on the back of their books, friendly faces in what looked like vacation pix taken by a relative, but you wouldn’t recognize them if they walked past you in the airport.

That was before authors were expected to be marketing experts. The author job requirements today are more than to be imaginative, ironic and understand metaphors. It’s way beyond the writing. An author needs to get out there and sell herself. She needs to create a fan page on Facebook, gather Twitter followers and update her website with new photos showing her at important well-attended events. She needs to blog regularly to niche audiences. And that’s only the virtual book tour.

In terms of face-to-face promotion, you still have your traditional book readings at book stores but also your author events with food and wine and theme party book launches.

It’s all about doing whatever you need to do to help keep your book and the book industry alive. Just as publishers and book store owners struggle to stay relevant in the electronic communication age so must authors. This means using all the tools to create your own buzz, including getting your teeth whitened and taking improv classes so you’ll be ready for primetime.

This is a new demanding world for the average writer, often a quiet, cerebral type, a happy loner content to spend days on end in a small room with a closed door, drinking cold coffee and dreaming up great characters and memorable dialogue. Authors do not normally aspire to be rock stars. On the glamour gauge they are of the scuffed shoes and comfy jeans style, somewhere near classical musicians and college teachers. They tend to look intense and act frazzled, perhaps from thinking so hard. Your average writer is not skilled at selling herself.

If she got the dream call from Oprah, she would be both thrilled and sick to her stomach.

But you have to do what you have to do. So before you even start writing the book you work on a press release. You take a special marketing class for authors where you learn it is not enough to produce a book, you need a brand. You learn what to wear on TV. No black shirts, no white pants, no sandals. And you support each others’ author gigs.

One I will be supporting this Saturday, Sept. 19, is the Sonoma County Book Festival which celebrates the local literary community and happens for the 10th year at Santa Rosa’s Courthouse Square and inside the main library. (Details at www.socobookfest.org)
It’s where authors, mostly from the Bay Area, get to do it the old fashioned way – read from their latest works and talk about writing with people who love books. (Disclosure: I’m not one of the authors but will be cheering on friends and my daughter and their new books.)

The book festival is a day of no hustle. Just people who write and people who read, the two most important ingredients for a book. It’s tradition and it’s free. And if you go and discover a great writer, feel free to tweet Oprah.