Microsoft Corp.

This two-part essay attempts a survey of electronic media developments in the book industry and their impact on the creative talents and skill-sets required of authors, writers, editors and production people in order to produce new forms of content organization and media mix.

With the steady increase in e-books sales and the growing demand from consumers for this format, many publishers have had to adjust their business models and production processes to provide their books as e-books. According to May sales figures released this week by the Association of American Publishers and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), e-book sales increased nearly 163 percent for the month, and year-to-date e-book sales increased 207.4 percent over the same period last year.

Falls Church, Va.-based digital publishing solutions provider Aptara has partnered with VitalSource, an Ingram Content Company, to make publishers’ content accessible to readers with disabilities. By providing content development and conversion services that now include tagging specifically for Section 508 of the Federal Accessibility Guidelines, Aptara’s publishing customers can utilize VitalSource’s new Bookshelf e-textbook platform.

In conjunction with the publication of a number of forthcoming titles from Atria Books, the publisher is employing a new smart phone technology that will provide readers with a digital experience to augment and enhance the physical book.

A few years back, I was giving a presentation about all the wonderful things our company was going to be able to do with XML, and that we should get to it.  Only thing was, our company was in the midst of being acquired by a major Dutch company that had a pretty strong reputation in their handling of XML (names have been omitted to protect the innocent).

San Francisco - The proposed settlement between Google (NASD: GOOG) and authors and publishers, which would set terms for the creation of Google's massive book-scanning project, is in violation of a number of international laws and treaties, according to a report from the Open Book Alliance, a group that opposes the deal and counts Google rivals Amazon (NASD: AMZN), Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) and Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) among its members.

Smashwords, a leading publisher and distributor of ebooks, now offers independent authors access to the new iBookstore through a distribution agreement with Apple.

Smashwords currently publishes nearly 10,000 original ebooks from over 4,000
authors and 150 small independent publishers.

Here are the best ways to begin or continue to get traction in the digital realm in 2010.

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Smashwords, a publisher and distributor of multiformat e-books, has entered into an e-book distribution agreement with Sony Electronics. Smashwords offers a free e-book publishing platform to authors and publishers that gives them control over pricing, sampling and distribution of their works.

Smashwords Authors and Publishers, Anywhere Around the World, Can Now Publish Directly into The eBook Store from Sony and other Major Ebook Retailers