Forbes Special Report: The Future of Books

Forbes has a really interesting special report about the future of books. What I like best is that it compiles guest writers who are able to speak from experience.

• One such writer is Cory Doctorow who blogs at BoingBoing. A popular scifi author, Cory provides free copies of his novels online under a Creative Commons license. He writes about his experience with boosting sales through free versions saying

"Most people who download the book don't end up buying it, but they wouldn’t have bought it in any event, so I haven’t lost any sales, I’ve just won an audience. A tiny minority of downloaders treat the free e-book as a substitute for the printed book--those are the lost sales. But a much larger minority treat the e-book as an enticement to buy the printed book. They're gained sales."

• A reporter covers the rise of plagiarism-catching technologies. Though plagiarism and copyright are different (the former is ethical, the later is legal) they can overlap. Although schools are using services like TurnItIn, many major publishers don't - and they end up paying the price when what they publish turns out to be plagiarized.

More as I finish the articles...