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While we’re in a time where digitizing for epub is an extra step, not a simple alternative output of an XML-based pre-press process, the ebook seems freighted with extra costs

that's what you'll get.

you need reliable metadata about dates and categories, which is why it's so disappointing that the book search's metadata are a train wreck: a mishmash wrapped in a muddle wrapped in a mess.

Here, too, Google has blamed the errors on the libraries and publishers who provided the books. But the libraries can't be responsible for books mislabeled as Health and Fitness and Antiques and Collectibles, for the simple reason that those categories are drawn from the Book Industry Standards and Communications codes, which are used by the publishers to tell booksellers where to put books on the shelves, not from any of the classification systems used by libraries.

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.

how Google gets and handles its information is an industrial secret

But a great corporation, even one sworn to do no evil, makes no such bargain with the public. There is no reciprocity. Trust is not mutual. It’s understood that the public interest, if considered at all, comes second to the interests of the corporation — profit, growth, and power. So the corporation can and will keep its secrets, even though what it is dealing in is information, even when its business is making knowledge accessible, open, free — the very opposite of keeping secrets.

Amazon, maker of the popular Kindle e-reader and one of the biggest book retailers in the country, will have the exclusive rights to sell electronic editions of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” and a later work, “Principle-Centered Leadership.” Mr. Covey also plans to gradually make other e-books available exclusively to Amazon, which will promote them on its Web site.

The move promises to raise the already high anxiety level among publishers about the economics of digital publishing and could offer authors a way to earn more profits from their works than they do under the traditional system.

Many authors and agents say that because the contracts for older books do not explicitly spell out electronic rights, they reside with the author. Big publishing houses argue that clauses like “in book form” or phrases that prohibit “competitive editions” preclude authors from publishing e-books through other parties.