In a related note to the previous story, Engadget points to an NPD report cited by Joystiq on the computer game market noting that nearly half of all computer games sold in 2009 were downloaded via digital distribution networks (21.3 million) rather than bought in boxes from retail outlets (23.5 million). Steam topped the list of top five digital retailers, followed by Direct2Drive and Blizzard.com. In this, the computer game industry joins the music, movie, and of course book industries as digitally-delivered content begins to displace that which is sold or rented more traditionally. However, new GameStop...

Sometimes the importance of digital reading shows up in unexpected places. Business Insider reports on Wednesday night’s episode of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, which featured an interview with Newsweek editor in chief Jon Meacham. It came out yesterday that, after nearly 50 years of ownership, the Washington Post company has put Newsweek up for sale. The magazine has been declining in readership and advertising considerably over the last few years. Meacham echoed Marc Andreesen’s advice to print publishers to “burn your boats”. In the era of the Internet, he admitted, most people probably...

Mediabistro’s “eBookNewser” section reports on a problem that publishers are having in the advent of the iPad: finding digitally-skilled employees who also understand the publishing industry. In a press release yesterday, Lynne Seid, Partner in the Global Consumer Marketing Practice at leadership advisory firm Heidrick & Struggles, said, "It's a mistake to think that you can simply bring in a 'new media person who is fluent in that world without being grounded in the traditional publishing model--even if that model is exploding. Organizations need talent at the top that can bridge the old and new...

In the first of a series of articles Michael Bhaskar discusses the state of digital commentary. It's a really good read and makes a lot of sense. It's about time somebody took on the commentators who are speaking from a platform of ignorance. ... While there is a lot of good commentary, much of it - my own included - too often fails to acknowledge the self-evident truth of digital that, to quote William Goldman, nobody knows anything. Whenever one reads about the impact of digital on publishing, one reads hearsay, rampant speculation and after-the-fact rationalisation. Guessing at...

The New York Times has a piece about Emory University’s exhibition of a digital archive of Salman Rushdie’s writing environment. The archive posed some interesting questions to archivists of how best to preserve it—should they simply store the data, or should they go for the look-and-feel of how Rushdie himself experienced it? They chose the latter. At the Emory exhibition, visitors can log onto a computer and see the screen that Mr. Rushdie saw, search his file folders as he did, and find out what applications he used. (Mac Stickies were a favorite.) They...