New literary models
Yet Google is helping ignite the digital market. In November, following the lawsuit, Random House announced plans to digitize 25,000 titles. It will sell access to them to consumers, charging a per page rate for everything from novels to recipes out of a cookbook. In December, HarperCollins Publishers Inc. said it would build a digital warehouse of its entire holdings — another 25,000 titles or so — which it may later sell over the Net.

Amazon.com is moving aggressively into digital books, too. It sells digital versions of most of its titles, available for download instantly. In August, it launched Amazon Shorts, a collection of stories, novellas, and essays that can be downloaded for 49 cents apiece. Later this year it plans to offer shoppers who purchase traditional books the chance to buy a version they they can read on the Web, too. That way they could keep Stephen King's Cell: A Novel on their nightstand and read a chapter from any computer with Net access. "We think consumers increasingly are ready for it," says Steve Kessel, vice-president for worldwide digital media.

Authors are intrigued by the opportunities to go digital. George Saunders, a short story author and professor of English at Syracuse University, says he'd like a way to get his work out to readers more quickly. After the scandal broke over James Frey's falsehoods in his hit book A Million Little Pieces, Saunders penned a humorous essay stemming from the events. It was a confession to Oprah Winfrey that all of the fiction he'd written had, in fact, been true. But Saunders had a hard time getting the piece published quickly, and now it feels dated. "There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity," he says. If digital books finally do take off, they could change not only how we read, but what we read, too.

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