E-Books and Retro Glue Protect the Vested Interests of Publishing

By MICHAEL JENSEN

The future of publishing is complicated enough to imagine without the new e-books -- Microsoft Reader, Rocket eBook, SoftBook, and the rest -- complicating matters by using Buck Rogers containers to spruce up 500-year-old publishing processes. Call me a curmudgeonly futurist if you must, but I'm not too thrilled about these new electronic-book toys, which are supposed to end publishing as we know it -- yet will actually perpetuate it.

The e-book gizmos are