Laura Dawson

In 2004, I struck out on my own as a consultant. I set up a website and email account that used my name in both. I set up a Google News alert so that I would get notifications when my company was mentioned on the web. And I started getting mail -- email and physical…

Years from now, we'll look back on 2014 as the year the web came for our books. It was in August of 2014 when the World Wide Web Consortium, the standards body for the World Wide Web, held its first Digital Publishing Interest Group. Prior to that point, the W3C had been holding investigative meetings, trying to determine whether or not it was in the web's interest to pursue the publishing industry as a potential partner and implementer of web technology.

With the evolution of the e-book still clearly in its formative years, developments over the past year could perhaps be remembered as a real growth spurt thanks in part to Amazon’s launch of the Kindle. Reviews on the digital device were mixed, but it quickly sold out within hours of its debut on Amazon.com. Goldman Sachs has estimated that Amazon has sold as many as 50,000 of the devices in the first quarter of 2008. And Amazon has made more than 120,000 titles available for download on the device since its launch. It’s too early to tell, however, whether the Kindle has directly spurred