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Then there are the erotic novels, ranging from the mildly sensuous to the highly explicit. One series presents the books with their original titles and adds: “The Wild and Wanton Edition.” These are pastiche, using Austen’s prose but suddenly veering off into most un-Austen-like descriptions of what really went on.

The continued life of the Jane Austen industry must have a secret. At the heart of it is probably the simple, persistent appeal of romance.

Austen is far from superficial. Although her books are set exclusively within the confines of a certain class, she provides a fascinating picture of the ways of that slice of society and the confines within which its members, particularly women, are obliged to live. She is also extremely funny, able to paint the foibles of characters with a dry wit that has dated very little. Her books are intimate and compelling. She has a voice that somehow seems to chime even with a modern sensibility. She is, in essence, timeless.

hey expect an industry evolution; they fail to recognize that they are facing a revolution—and if they don't utterly transform themselves, right now, it will destroy them. But of course, they never do.

I asked him: How bad is it? "It's pretty bad," he said. "And this economy is only making it worse. There are parents now who tell their kids they will only pay tuition for a business, engineering or science degree."

Santosh said, "Are you kidding? English majors are exactly the people I'm looking for."

Almost anything you can imagine you can now build, said Santosh, so the battleground in business has shifted from engineering, which everybody can do, to storytelling, for which many fewer people have real talent. "That's why I want to meet your English majors," he said.

"It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough—it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing."

But if the competition in tech moves to this new battlefield, the edge will go to those institutions that can effectively employ imagination, metaphor, and most of all, storytelling.

Twenty-first-century storytelling: multimedia, mass customizable, portable and scalable, drawing upon the myths and archetypes of the ancient world, on ethics, and upon a deep understanding of human nature and even religious faith.