1. The popularity of e-books will increase, with titles formatted for Amazon's Kindle leading the way. Content for the Sony Reader will sell faster than ever, but by this time next year, Kindle-compatible books will be outselling them by more than 2 to 1. And Palm, which has historically been the bestselling format, will have had its best year-on-year increase as well. Powells.com, which offers the largest selection of titles in formats that are not in closed distribution (a total of 150,000 in Adobe, Microsoft and Palm so far) will also have a record year for e-book sales. By year end, nearly every straight-text title published with commercial intent will be available for Kindle; the trick for the other formats will be to make sure they're included, too. And Kindle pricing will drive the market. But despite the fast growth, e-books will still make up a tiny share of the market—no more than 2% of sales for most titles—and will contribute only a minimal amount to publishers' bottom lines.

2. Sales of books in electronic form to public libraries will continue to grow: Ingram's MyiLibrary, Follett, NetLibrary and Overdrive are already deep into this business. This opportunity will present a challenge as publishers discover that some older contracts don’t give them the right to make that kind of sale.

An assembly of Catholic bishops on Monday called for the use of mass communications -- including television, cinema, DVDs and even iPods -- to be used to spread the Bible in as many languages as possible.

The nod toward technology is not unusual: The Vatican had one of Europe's first Web sites, for example, and has always been quick to adopt new technologies. The bishops' conference said that the stakes are higher than ever, arguing that the written word was insufficient for the modern world.

"The voice of the Divine Word must resonate over the radio, on Internet channels with virtual distribution (and by) CDs, DVDs and iPods, and on television and cinema screens," an official statement said.

[I]ts Reader Digital Book will be able to read electronic books published using the .epub format that many of the largest book publishers are using. Until now, Sony's e-book reader could only read books available from the Sony e-book store, PDF documents, and DRM-free text. Starting next month, the new PRS-505 Sony Reader model will be able to access secure DRM- and non-DRM-protected content in the .epub format, formerly called the Open eBook format.

The Sony Reader Digital Book is the first e-book reading device to support the .epub format, which is the XML-based standard format proposed by the International Digital Publishing Forum. It allows publishers to convert books to different formats, protect the copy using DRM (digital rights management) and has the ability to resize PDF e-books and other text to better fit the reader's screen size.

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"This upgrade opens the door to a whole host of paid and free content from third-party eBook stores, Web sites, and even public libraries," Steve Haber, senior vice president of consumer product marketing for Sony Electronics, said in a statement.

The announcement is the latest move in a standards war over e-book formats pitting Sony against Amazon. Amazon's Kindle e-book reader and e-books it sells support the proprietary .azw format. Amazon also acquired Mobipocket, which offers a format for texts read on PDAs and BlackBerrys and its Kindle can read DRM-free .mobi files.

It's a good enough package that my guess is that digital readers will soon become common, perhaps even the usual way we read books. How will this affect the publishing business? Right now, publishers make as much from a Kindle download as they do from the sale of a physical book. But the experience of the music industry suggests that this won't last: once digital downloads of books become standard, it will be hard for publishers to keep charging traditional prices.

Indeed, if e-books become the norm, the publishing industry as we know it may wither away. Books may end up serving mainly as promotional material for authors' other activities, such as live readings with paid admission. Well, if it was good enough for Charles Dickens, I guess it's good enough for me.

Now, the strategy of giving intellectual property away so that people will buy your paraphernalia won't work equally well for everything. To take the obvious, painful example: news organizations, very much including this one, have spent years trying to turn large online readership into an adequately paying proposition, with limited success.

But they'll have to find a way. Bit by bit, everything that can be digitized will be digitized, making intellectual property ever easier to copy and ever harder to sell for more than a nominal price. And we'll have to find business and economic models that take this reality into account.

"We are extremely excited to publish original content written by such a prominent author, available exclusively as an e-book," said Ana Maria Allessi, publisher of HarperMedia. "HarperMedia publishes approximately 350 titles per year, and Julie Quinn is a key player in this program. She is one of our top five best- selling e-book authors, and we expect that these original e-books will attract even more fans."

With the advent of the dedicated reader the e-book industry is on the verge of explosive growth, and Avon Books publisher Liate Stehlik believes that romance readers will be at the forefront. "The New York Times recently reported that female readers now compose one of the fastest-growing markets for digital books, noting their voracious reading appetite -- booksellers have told us that it's not uncommon for avid romance fans to buy upwards of five books each month," said Stehlik. "Julia Quinn is one of Avon's most popular authors, with four million copies of her books in print. These original e-book epilogues, of two of her most popular books, provide a perfect lead-in to the publication of On the Way to the Wedding, the final installment in her beloved Bridgerton series."

"After countless requests from readers, I decided to try something a little bit different," notes bestselling author Julia Quinn. "I'm thrilled to serve up The Bridgerton 2nd Epilogues -- the story after the story, in this unique book format. I think romance fans are going to be very excited."