What's On Line?

Snow firmly believes that e-books will "soon represent a substantial portion of the $27.5 billion annual book market." He adds, "While there are certainly still some technical obstacles to overcome (security and portability in particular), we believe that the sheer economics of electronic publishing will continue to drive the industry in our direction."

New products like Web Buy and PDF Merchant from Adobe and RocketEditions from NuvoMedia, Snow suggests, address the current challenges of security and portability.

"Like everyone else in the publishing world, we spend a lot of time trying to anticipate industry trends," Snow observes. "So far, our efforts (particularly adopting PDF as our standard for desktop computers and using print-on-demand to serve established markets) have been rewarded."

In fact, says Snow, since the changes in technology are occurring so rapidly, keeping up, or, as he puts it, "the ability to roll with the technological punches," may be most important. As the saying goes, Snow points out, "he who hesitates is lunch."

"We believe that authors and publishers who are flexible enough to embrace new ways of reaching the reading public will succeed," he concludes, "while those who are slow to respond will be left in the proverbial (and technological) dust."