Crazy what emergence you get from multiple automatic algorithms interacting.

I think it's good for authors in the long term, but with some short-term upheaval.

Should be an interesting event. I assume textbooks, but maybe the authoring tools could be even more useful.

I think it makes very clear that, like the record industry 10 years ago, the publishing industry is running scared, and is going to lurch about looking for a solution where content is available everywhere and priced well below where it was priced when instantiated in a physical medium.

I'm surprised Apple isn't handling self-publishing directly, like they effectively due with the App Store and iPhone Developer agreements. Some kind of legal shielding?

Will the iBookstore do for self-publishing what the App Store did for small software developers?