The "cloud" is now, officially, the next big thing in publishing. Technology blog Electric Pig says that "the cloud is the new frontline in the war for book sales", and Bloomsbury's Evan Schnittman notes that "anyone that has any platform with any legs moving forward is on cloud". I doubt these sentences would have made sense or been understood only a few weeks ago. And I am not entirely sure I understand them even now.
To Mighty Google's move into eBook sales (in the US, so far) – trumpeted to the world on 8th December – Amazon has promptly reacted by launching its own cloud-based eBookstore.
In the meantime, Jamie's 30-Minute Meals has become the fastest selling hardback book in this country since records began (I think). It clocked up around 735,000 as of last week. I wonder how many ebook copies of the book have been sold – if anyone has that bit of information, I'd be curious to know.
So books are not entirely dead for the time being – at least some books. . . There's every reason to remain cheerful.
AG
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