Ken Auletta looks at how writers and publishers are trying to figure out their roles in the age of [Kindles and iPads](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_auletta#ixzz0mKike1Kn):
> Tim O’Reilly, the founder and C.E.O. of O’Reilly Media, which publishes about two hundred e-books per year, thinks that the old publishers’ model is fundamentally flawed. “They think their customer is the bookstore,” he says. “Publishers never built the infrastructure to respond to customers.” Without bookstores, it would take years for publishers to learn how to sell books directly to consumers. They do no market research, have little data on their customers, and have no experience in direct retailing.
Is Amazon a bookstore or a publisher? A partner or competitor? Adding Google and Apple to the equation only makes it [more complicated](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2010/on-amazon-apple-and-dick-moves). But it’s a mistake to confuse uncertainty with doom.
> Publishing exists in a continual state of forecasting its own demise; at one major house, there is a running joke that the second book published on the Gutenberg press was about the death of the publishing business.
Auletta’s lengthy [New Yorker article](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_auletta#ixzz0mKike1Kn) is worth a read.
(Thanks to Quinn for the link.)