Credit: Harry Campbell

No one can doubt that digitization and the Internet, together with various factors intrinsic to the publishing industry, will radically transform the distribution of books: books can now be transmitted directly from writer to reader, eliminating much of the traditional publishing supply chain. Research, technical data, and the contents of dictionaries, manuals, certain journals, and encyclopedias of all kinds can now be sent to users' screens, item by item, on demand. This largely ephemeral material need no longer be distributed in book form.

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