Author's and Publisher's Alert! A digital Tsunami is about to disrupt the book business.

Scan This Book! - New York Times:

Thanks to Stuart Silverstone for this link to Kevin Kelly's article in the current New York Times Magazine. In this piece, Kelly really "gets" the consequences of the web and new digital technology as he has for so many years following his coining the term The New Economy back in the day.

Kelly provides a clear analysis of the impact of the scanning activiities of the Google 5 Anatomy of Aggregate Collections: The Example of Google Print for Libraries to digitally capture and make searchable and retrievable by anyone on the web the millions of books in the libraries of 5 major universities. As with most of Kelly's futuristic forays, this article is well worth reading in depth.

Kelly describes an all-digital universal library of the future where the Napster style of "rip, mix and burn" will create opportunities for anyone to modify and enhance the original book content. He foresees a mixture of digital media almost too bizarre to imagine. But one thing Kelly makes clear to present and prospective authors and publishers is that the business model of book publishing will be drastically disrupted.

Kelly says "As copies have been dethroned, the economic model built on them is collapsing. In a regime of superabundant free copies, copies lose value. They are no longer the basis of wealth. Now relationships, links, connection and sharing are. Value has shifted away from a copy toward the many ways to recall, annotate, personalize, edit, authenticate, display, mark, transfer and engage a work. Authors and artists can make (and have made) their livings selling aspects of their works other than inexpensive copies of them. They can sell performances, access to the creator, personalization, add-on information, the scarcity of attention (via ads), sponsorship, periodic subscriptions — in short, all the many values that cannot be copied. "