Project Gutenberg is pretty impressive. I think the author has misconstrued a shift in reading emphasis to be a diminishment in reading itself. It isn't. I read more on the Internet than I did as a book-a-day junkie. I've cut the latter habit back to a more manageable book a week or even two if I'm feeling lazy. But I read around 12 hours a day between work and leisure.
What the Internet also offers is a way for a hugely greater number of people to have their words read. I agree with the author that some of the changes within the commercial publishing industry have become cramped and self-destructive, but I and my fellow FReepers don't depend on it. (Good thing, too, because it's a b17ch to find an agent these days. Ask me.) But I'm being published just as soon as I hit the Post button. That's a power no common man ever had in all of history.
What is happening with the Internet is absolutely compelling intellectually. We're in the middle of a ferment whose issue we cannot imagine. Twenty years from now it will seem peaceful.
Industry is very short sighted. They want instant results. I buy books from Half Price Books which USED to be a used bookstore chain but now consists mostly of remaindered books that have come out within the last 9 months. How do so many books (unscuffed) get DUMPED on the market?
Why would I pay $75 for a book that I'll find for $24.99 NEW within a year?
Why pay $24.95 for a book that will be $9.98 within a year? $12.48 within the first month if someone turns in a used copy (or publisher review copy)?
Borders/Barnes&Noble/Bookstop/et al all stock the same books. Bookstop was a great bookstore chain 20 years ago.
I have to go to independent bookstores these days to find much of anything. I can find something in the big stores but what I'd rather have isn't shelved.
Amazon and the other dot coms just do what ANY big box can do, order a book from the books in print list. Amazon doesn't stock every book they list. They can GET it but they don't have them.
I prefer to thumb through it before I buy too.
But back to the industry. Book sales are down. So are newspaper circulation figures. So are charting music album sales. So are ticket sales for big Hollywood films. So are ratings for the nightly news.
The industries got old. People are still here. We are diversified from the mainstream.