The latest in looking back from the world of books.

First Murdoch and his business models

And Tim Spalding ponders the future of libraries.

Put them together and one could be left wondering if the refusal of publishers to adapt to 21st century realities might do lasting harm to libraries. Spalding, however, takes the more typical approach to this kind of topic, but one has to start wondering whether that only ends up getting this entire issue exactly backward.

And then, finally, what is one to make of this?

"Although there are probably few people reading this blog who expect bookstores to be around in 15 or 20 years (and those who do will undoubtedly leave a comment!), there are many who would like to keep them around as long as possible. There is a magic to being in a building surrounded by 40,000, 60,000, 100,000 different books. Bookstores are inherently community centers. They make possible the wide dissemination and promotion of great writing. They enable people to see heavily-illustrated books before they purchase them.

"But have you thought about this? If you are for bookstores lasting as long as possible, you want to slow down the uptake of ebooks....

"The book business has always been one with very low financial barriers to entry. Ebook publishing makes getting into the game even cheaper. It is also going to bring increased competition to book publishers from content-creators outside publishing. None of this is appealing if your power as a publisher is the ability to control shelf space and get fast reprints.I don’t think anybody would want to be accused of being in favor of killing bookstores faster. And very few of us would be comfortable having it said we were trying to slow down the progress of digital technology, strategizing to slow down ebook uptake. But you are for one or the other, unless you don’t have any opinion at all."