Publishing’s G20: the digital debate over the future of the book industry (guest-blog)

Polis Intern Lauren Sozio reports on a New York conference on the digital future of book publishing In the past few months, New York’s publishing industry has been hit by its own version of the Wall Street crash. But problems run deeper than the recession’s domino effect and puncture an age-old business model ruled by barons chasing the bestseller, tossing out advances, and collecting royalties. Then along came Google Book Search–certainly not the only harbinger of the industry’s (as we know it today) demise–but the company that altruists love to defend and anti-trusters love to blame. In the advent of the Internet, writers don’t have to play by the rules as PC’s have eroded the formal barriers to publishing and replaced them with a deceptive free-for-all where confusion over copyright, representation, and of course, revenue loom overhead like the Google’s grey computing cloud.