ReadWriteWeb

The book and media industries are going through interesting times, to put it mildly. As physical books prepare for their demise, the confusion around pricing of digital ones grows. Yet, whether physical or digital, to sell books you need marketing. People need to hear about a book before they buy it.

This is where the book review come in. Every publicist and publisher's dream is to land a positive review with an authoritative source. A good review in The New York Times or the L.A. Times used to be a pass to big figure sales. Sounds like it still should be, but it is not, because most book reviews are poorly formatted and cannot be recognized by Google and other software.

Vook is a new company that's come up with a method for blending text and premium video to create an interesting mobile multimedia experience around popular literature.

It combines the (relatively) old skool readability of a Kindle with the engagement of a YouTube series, all wrapped in the delicious flavor of a usable, interactive UI for web users and iFanboys alike.

Startup e-book publishing house Smashwords has sussed out a distribution agreement with Sony Electronics that will allow for user creation of publishing accounts and expedited publishing and distribution of books for the Sony Readers through their eBook Store.

Effective immediately, the Sony Publisher Portal is re-launched and open for business. Aspiring authors and independent publishers can upload Microsoft Word documents and have distro-ready e-books within hours.

In this fourth part of our investigation into the ongoing changes in the book publishing business, we look at the author's point of view. What are they getting today? What would they like to get? What can they reasonably expect to get as this drama unfolds? Authors are the creative juice of the whole eco-system. If they don't create material that people want to read, no one will make any money.

Their struggles in the old model have been well documented (of course, we should have expected them to write about their experiences): the starving writer up in the garret who uses rejection letters from publishers for wallpaper is an established literary hack. In the new world of print on demand, e-books and social media marketing, the author takes center stage. Those with an appetite for it can really take control of their work and commercial fortune.

In Part 1, we described the three big waves crashing down on the traditional book publishing business: Google Search, the Kindle and e-books, and print on demand. In Part 2, we indulged in some science fiction, envisioning the future of the major players in book publishing: readers, authors, printers, publishers, retailers, and e-book device vendors. In Part 3, we'll dig into one very specific business practice: returnability (a.k.a. "the curse of unsold inventory"). Some thinking outside the box on this 70-year-old business practice could possibly help an industry in turmoil. Unless e-books simply replace all physical books (which seems highly unlikely), some radical changes will need to be made to the physical book supply chain.

In part 1 of this series, we looked at the three big waves crashing down on the traditional book publishing business: Google Search, the Kindle and e-books, and print on demand. In this second part, we'll try to wipe the muck from our crystal ball and see how this could play out in the future, specifically for the major players of book publishing: readers, authors, printers, publishers, retailers, and e-book device vendors.

"Bits of destruction" is a phrase Fred Wilson uses to describe the destructive part of "creative destruction" brought on by digitization. We hear a lot about the destruction wrought on the newspaper business. A more interesting and nuanced wave is now hitting the book publishing business. Actually, it is three waves: the digitization of back catalogs, e-books, and print on demand. However this plays out, a lot of people will be affected, but the way in which it will play out is not at all obvious. This is too big a subject for one post, so read this as an introduction to a multi-post investigation.