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Another factor in the pricing of ebooks--Amazon's ranking algorithms, which may result in price increases to indie books so that they will be noticed. Indie author Edward W. Robertson is a stats junkie who's been studying the e-seller's algorithms for a while.

Elsevier journal pricing backlash leads to a boycott.

Under normal circumstances, the fact that Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson's latest book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, logged over 17,000 free views in a day on upstart "social publisher" Scribd would be the story. The real story, however, lurks in the comments left on the Scribd web site.

Debate on the costs of college textbooks.  I think we did a better job at last year's SPI.

This is not likely to have any real effect. Textbooks are sold to a captive market. Those who are paying their tuition without benefit of student loans will buy the books without thinking too much about the cost. Those who are going to school on student loans will go into debt.

This article is over a year old, and soon to be updated by Chris Anderson's book of the same title, but it's still well worth the read.

As Amazon does everything possible to compete with brick and mortar stores, and drive small book sellers out of business, how much control will they have over the industry? One of the upsides of electronic publishing is that information will not be controlled by corporate America in electronic form.

A heavily corrected unfinished draft of an early Jane Austen manuscript sold at auction at Sotheby's in London on Thursday for almost 1 million pounds ($1.6 million), three times the estimated presale price, The Associated Press reported. The draft of "The Watsons" went to an unidentified buyer; Sotheby's said it is the only major manuscript by Austen still in private hands.