Marketing guru Seth Godin has a piece on PaidContent (reposted from his Domino Project blog) responding to an interview with the head of Ingram Books about the future of books and publishing. In the interview, Ingram CEO David “Skip” Prichard trots out some of the usual predictions about the future of the book—multimedia extras, print-on-demand, physical bookstores finding “niches” to adapt to, and print publishers still being necessary. Godin calls Prichard’s views “economically ridiculous,” basing his argument on Chris Anderson’s “long tail” theory. Godin suggests that the broad consumer choice the long tail makes possible will drive down production...

Barnes & Noble is offering a new free e-book every week for the next few weeks, with a twist: to redeem the e-book download, you have to come into a Barnes & Noble store and show them your Nook or your general-purpose device (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry, HTC HD2, PC, or Mac) running Barnes & Noble’s eReader. (Or just bring the device and the staff will help you put eReader on it.) You then receive a voucher you can redeem at B&N’s website to download your e-book. On the one hand, this seems to negate one of...

Jason Epstein, who was interviewed by NPR for the e-book pricing story we mentioned yesterday, also has a fairly lengthy editorial printed in the New York Review of Books this week in which he looks back to the birth of the printing press, and ahead to digitization’s replacement of its fruits. (I discovered only after writing this piece that Paul also mentioned Epstein’s editorial back in February, even though it has a date of March 11th. Time travel? But my piece is much longer than Paul’s was, so I’m posting it anyway.) In digitization, Epstein sees...