You have to hand it to Harry Potter author JK Rowling, she has guts and entrepreneurial nous. The British author is taking her Harry Potter franchise digital. There will be e-books sold directly to customers. She's also setting up a new social network site called Pottermore.
The Wall Street Journal says this could be a game changer for writers, encouraging them to set themselves up as independent agents and self-publish. Alternatively, they might forgo all traditional means of book publishing and set up their own bookstores, reaping 100% of everything they sell.
As Nicholas Lezard writes in The Guardian, it also changes reading for children. "It is interesting that, as Rowling managed to get a large swath of children reading books at a time when it looked as though they weren't going to be reading anything between proper covers any more, she is now presiding over the next stage of the evolution of reading. At least if Rowling is at the helm we need not fear anything tacky, meretricious, or anti-literary in the grand scheme of things."
But more importantly, it changes the future of the publishing industry which has been convulsing with the impact of the Internet and reading alternatives. We will see fewer bookstores, though books will be more plentiful than ever before and the entire book supply chain from author to customer will become atomized into its component bits.
Rowling's business model fits in with that perfectly.
no comment untill now