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Perhaps the most revealing thing about the "Dumb Money" story, in fact, is that everyone involved -- author, agent and publisher -- saw it as an experiment, the kind of small-scale trial run that a late-adopting industry needs to do a lot more of.

In the U.S., public figures have to prove that statements about them are false and made with malice -- but in Britain a statement that harms one's reputation is enough to justify a libel action. Defendants must prove that statements are true or "fair comment." This has a chilling effect on the reporting of damaging facts.

"If information cannot be freely exchanged, if journalists must fear being sued over information reported in good faith on matters crucial to our defense, matters such as the financial networks supporting jihadist terror, then we cannot make sound security policy," former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said at a recent conference on "libel lawfare." This is a useful term to describe lawsuits to suppress facts about radical Islam and terrorism.

The Web means that publishing anywhere means publishing everywhere, thus subjecting authors and publishers to litigation in pro-plaintiff jurisdictions

in my view there is no need for a digital editor as such in a trade publishing house, rather an editor who understands the digital world:

it’s marketing that will have to continue to change the most to find new readers and new ways of reaching readers.

Writing that uses new media by incorporating visuals, sound, movies and so on in different delivery platforms such as the new Sony Reader, Alternate Reality Games mixing narrative and interaction by readers and contributors, self-published material, collaborative wikinovels and other kinds of informal, or extra-formal creativity, are exactly the kind of material that a traditional trade publishing house such as Pan Macmillan, however innovative, finds it very difficult to use, or even acknowledge, in a publishing process, and it’s unlikely to be seriously practical in the short term, which means until someone can think of a way to make money out of it, not least because digital projects are typically seen by customers and authors as free or very low-cost, when in fact they’re often more expensive than traditional ones because of the high set-up and development costs

iTunes is more of a tollbooth

much the same with digital books

But though I can't predict specific winners, I can offer a recipe for recognizing them. When you see something that's taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn't have before, you're probably looking at a winner. And when you see something that's merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue, you're probably looking at a loser.