ReadWriteWeb

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.

Sony just announced that owners of the Sony Reader can now access over 1 million free, out of copyright and public domain eBooks from the Google Books library. Sony first announced this deal with Google earlier this year, but at that time, it only offered about 500,000 free books. Barnes & Noble, which announced its eBook store and forthcoming hardware eReader last week currently features about 500,000 free books from Google, while Amazon's Kindle can read free books from Project Gutenberg, but doesn't offer compatibility with the ePub format that Google prefers. Amazon currently offers about 300,000 books.

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.

The New York Times launched a new version of its Times Reader desktop application today. The Times Reader allows users to read the New York Times offline on their desktops or laptops, though full access to the application is only available to those who subscribe to the printed version of the Times, or to users who subscribe to Times Reader itself for $14.95 per month. The new version of the Times Reader is powered by Adobe AIR, so that Mac and Linux users can now also finally use this application, which, until today, was a Windows-only product.

If you're like most folks interested in technology, you likely have a feed reader full of hundreds of RSS feeds on your favorite topics. No doubt, they all have one thing in common: they're in a language that you're capable of reading.

But what about all of that interesting news and information that's written in languages you don't speak? Get ready to have access to even more information about your favorite topics, because now Google Reader leverages Google Translate technology to convert any feed to your preferred language.