The commentator’s background in music really skews his perspective becasue in that business there has historically been more free use of material; and piracy is culturally acceptable because a majority of the customers are broke teens. While books may fall prey to easier electronic lending, the audience traditionally skews older, has money and understands that there is no free lunch. Further there is also a notion that owning books has an inherent value, so the models of behavior are likely to be quite different.

The web IS evolving too and the era of garnering eyeballs and figuring out how to monetize them later is largely over as Google still smarts from You Tube acquisition (Don’t mention MySPace to Rupert Murdoch) and Facebook and Twitter will be the latest social media (remember AIM?) to figure out that people don’t like other people monetizing their personal communications. And if Viacom prevails over YouTube, how many billions more will Google lose in a tidal wave of lawsuits?

The publishing world is changing, but mainly to the benefit of authors. The best alliance right now would be authors and publicists – the least paid in the industry because Rich is right. If authors can form relationships with their readers as though their were no publishers, they will thrive — as will the authors whom publishers made famous or even semi-famous.

But none of this requires authors relinquishing control of how their work is used.