A couple of months ago, I noticed a tie-in between the publishing industry's future and the introduction of the iPhone reported at Print is Dead, and posted an entry here on the subject (What publishing can learn from the iPhone). Today, following Wednesday's big announcement by Steve Jobs that he's slashed $200 off the iPhone price and introduced WiFi ready iPods (just Google it), the opportunities for the publishing industry to jump on the train to the future continue: Apple Saves The Publishing Industry | Booksquare.
All the positive motivation is there, as rigorously detailed at Kassia Kroszer's post (Booksquare). In fact, Kroszer's points directly respond to complaints librarians like Karen Coyle are making about the unavailability of Internet in the stacks (I hope libraries are listening). But the stick is there as well, as noted at TechCrunch in connection with the announcement that Amazon and Google will be entering the ebook business:
Like the iPod, the key driver of sales of the [Amazon Kindle book reader] device won’t be the depth of content available on the associated service, but the availability of pirated, free content on BitTorrent and other P2P networks. eBooks are coming, but they’re not here yet.
Wake up! Smell the Starbucks (where you can WiFi music directly to your new iPod now...). Copyright owners can wrap themselves in their copyrights and drm themselves into obscurity, or they can find a seat on the train. It will be different, not relying on controlling access to everything, undeniably, but I think that's the future -- for music *and* for publishing.
