Yet libraries, the intellectual heart of universities, have become perhaps the most commercialized academic area within universities, with troubling implications for the future of higher education.

Through innocuous incremental stages, academic libraries have reached a point where they are now guided largely by the mores of commerce, not academe.

Over the last decade, however, as the number and cost of journals have soared, most libraries have decided to forgo purchasing hard copies. The shift from owning a journal to merely providing access to its digital incarnation has, of course, saved some money. But those savings come in tandem with detrimental changes both to the content of library collections and the ways those collections are used.

Though the world of print is receding before a tide of digital books, blogs and other Web sites, a generation of college students weaned on technology appears to be holding fast to traditional textbooks.

According to the National Association of College Stores, digital books make up just under 3 percent of textbook sales, although the association expects that share to grow to 10 percent to 15 percent by 2012 as more titles are made available as e-books.

three-quarters of the students surveyed said they still preferred a bound book to a digital version.

Now Laurence is 6 ½, and while he regularly tackles 80-page chapter books, he is still a “reluctant reader,” Ms. Gignac said. Sometimes, she said, he tries to go back to picture books. “He would still read picture books now if we let him, because he doesn’t want to work to read,” she said, adding that she and her husband have kept him reading chapter books.

The most important lesson I can convey to book publishing professionals is that they must understand that those of us who have made the transition to ebooks, buy ebooks, not print books. Ebook reading device users don’t shop in bookstores and then decide what edition they want; ebook device readers buy what is available in ebookstores. Search an ebookstore for a title and if it doesn’t come up, it doesn’t exist – no matter how many versions are available in print

Trade eBook sales were $40,800,000 for July, a 250% increase over the previous July’s $16,300,000. The previous high was $31,900,000

You may note my repeated emphasis on the small size of Independent Publishers, and how this can give them the advantage, in some instances, against Big Publishers. The reason for this is that small entities are generally more adaptable than larger ones, and during this period of transition to the New World – where we know the landscape is changing, but not what it is changing into – publishers need to be adaptable in order to survive; in order to thrive, they need to be willing to experiment. Many of the experiments they take when they test the waters will result in failure, but as Independent Publishers have less to lose and more to gain, they will be that much more innovative.