E-Books and Print-on-Demand Reshape Book Business

Once upon a time, publishers released a paperback a year or more after a successful hardcover. These days, e-books are adding to the marketing buzz of a new hardcover, not to mention bringing down the average price of books sold during that first "printing." As a result, paperbacks are being released months (not years) after hardcover editions, to ride on the momentum of the hardcover/e-book excitement.

Now some analysts and observers are concerned that books will face even higher hurdles as Amazon expands its retail range into non-media products in search of higher profit margins.

Yet Amazon is involved with another fast-growing business: Producing print-on-demand books for independent authors. In other words, everybody can be an author and make his/her own books available through Amazon's CreateSpace POD publishing arm. Some of these independently-published books are so successful that mainstream publishers sign the authors to traditional contracts and reissue the books via traditional distribution channels.

And, of course, e-book readers like Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook are reshaping the way people read, which in turn will change buying patterns for physical books and digital versions. This is only the beginning of the evolution--more changes are on the way.