The E-book Wars, Part 1

About ten years ago I wrote a long essay titled "The Battle for the Future of the Book". In hindsight, this has turned from a battle to a complex series of multi-front wars with very wide-reaching implications, and in this seminar meeting and the next I'll examine these developments. For this session, I"ll focus on economic, social, and legal developments surrounding e-books with particular attention to how authors, booksellers, and libraries are encountering a very different world.