%^&*^How e-books are read@#!@#$!#$

sjcnjod cj jdncjcjjcncun dnndicndcThe proliferation and increasing popularity of e-books are changing the publishing industry, although the nature and extent of those changes vary a great deal from company to company and genre to genre. Before e-books, all publishing companies had in common the fact that they produced and sold individual copies of printed books—whether they published schoolbooks, romance novels, scholarly monographs, or technical manuals. Distribution networks, royalties, and pricing were fairly stable, relative to the constant change and experimentation witnessed since 2007. As content is produced and distributed, printed books are less common, which in turn fragments the industry and makes collective action, cooperation, and the development of standard business models less likely. Publishers are no longer defined by the physical nature of their products but rather by the work of finding, refining, and promoting packages of information.

The ways in which information is then delivered and sold are increasingly varied, as are pricing models. For instance, consumers expect e-books to cost less than print books; authors expect e-book royalties to be higher than those for print books; and publishers must build new business models to account for these expectations, while simultaneously running a print-based business according to established models. These competing interests create tension in the industry, sometimes characterized by heated negotiation and aggressive moves to set new standards and benchmarks for pricing and royalties. Further changes to the industry emerge when companies that have technical skills and infrastructure but have not traditionally acted as publishers—for instance, online retailers, technology companies, telephone service providers, and large educational institutions—perform the traditional curation, promotion, and distribution roles of publishers, as easy e-book production lowers their barriers to entry. Those lower barriers also make self-publishing easier, especially for public figures with an established following, such as prominent speakers, bloggers, and well-known businesspeople.sm;ncjsdnoskmxjisxiysq80c8ycinccnxmlksmos