Most Entrenched Business People Don't Get It.

Yesterday in the NY Times there was an article, Steal This Book. Or at Least Download It Free about the changing nature of publishing. Author, Warren Adler, "The War of the Roses" says "The big publishing houses just don't get it".

Mr. Adler insists. The Internet, with its limitless capacity for blogs and whole books that can be electronically whisked from place to place, means people can pretty well publish what they want. On the downside, the competition for readers, already intense, will become maddeningly so. But writers need not make it past the gatekeepers at publishing houses to be published. Vanity publishing - a term Mr. Adler hates - has come into the electronic age.

Nothing can guarantee a sale, but, Mr. Adler said, for as little as $295 - plus a fee for each book sold - self-publishing services will register a copyright and put a book into an electronic format that can be sold as an e-book or printed out. Up the price to $1,000 or so, and the services will send out news releases, contact reviewers and offer the book to stores and online vendors like Amazon.com.

Seth Godin, an author himself, Purple Cow, says Lots of publishing news today...

Like most industries, everyone thought it would last forever. It didn't. They don't. Yours probably won't either.

What's the way out? Why Can't Business Learn From Open Source And Blogging?