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The music industry whines like little babies - they spent HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS pushing their locked format that NO ONE WANTED. They spent HUNDREDS of MILLIONS trying to create a locked CD that could be defeated by a marker or resulted in a class action lawsuit. NO ONE will buy a TIME INC tablet or a CONDE NAST tablet to read digital versions of the magazine ... they have to come up something better. First of all, they can't even figure put how to get around postage increases or the fact the newstand has changed in 100 years - all they do is complain that they miss a world where only magazines could print in color or 25% of American read LIFE - it's a new world - get used to it. INNOVATE and stop WHINING. Coming up with your own tablet is NOT innovation - that's like coming up with a leather jacket for a print magazine. THINK more and cry less.

But e-books won’t stay on the periphery of book publishing much longer. E-book hardware is on the verge of going mainstream. More dedicated e-readers are coming, with ever larger screens. So, too, are computer tablets that can serve as giant e-readers, and hardware that will not be very hard at all: a thin display flexible enough to roll up into a tube.

With the new devices in hand, will book buyers avert their eyes from the free copies only a few clicks away that have been uploaded without the copyright holder’s permission? Mindful of what happened to the music industry at a similar transitional juncture, book publishers are about to discover whether their industry is different enough to be spared a similarly dismal fate.

Total e-book sales, though up considerably this year, remained small, at $81.5 million, or 1.6 percent of total book sales through July.