This is a very important topic. In the short term, the Publishing Industry is going to evolve extremely rapidly with enormous impact on authors, editors… and the public of course.
The first act of this evolution can probably be dated to the launch of the Kindle by Amazon : online ebooks on a small device, convenient, cheap and ubiquitous.
The second act just begun last week when Apple launched the iPad. The device looks nice, but its software is very limited. And there is no doubt that other manufacturers will propose better devices in the months to come (i.e. an Asus tablet with Jolicloud…)
But the battle will not be fought only between Amazon, Apple and the others manufacturers and distributors. It will rage between publishers and the public.
The move towards digital distribution of books and newspapers will have an obvious repercussion on prices and business models. But publishers will fight to maintain their prices, even online ; increase their profits ; keep their habits and business models unmodified.
An exemple of this new fight took place this week-end when MacMillan threatened Amazon to delete their books from the Kindle platform unless the price of digital books increased to the same level as their normal books : 15$ instead of 9$.
The next steps? The decrease of real-world sales, the mirage of DRM, the increase of piracy… and the size of personal libraries from 500 books to a 500 000…
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