Redefining What an Ebook Is and Who Gets to Publish It

In E-Books, Publishers Have Rivals: News Sites. (The New York Times, 9/18/2011)

Excerpt: Book publishers are surrounded by hungry new competitors: Amazon, with its steadily growing imprints; authors who publish their own e-books; online start-ups like The Atavist and Byliner.

Now they have to contend with another group elbowing into their territory: news organizations.

Swiftly and at little cost, newspapers, magazines and sites like The Huffington Post are hunting for revenue by publishing their own version of e-books, either using brand-new content or repurposing material that they may have given away free in the past.

And by making e-books that are usually shorter, cheaper to buy and more quickly produced than the typical book, they are redefining what an e-book is — and who gets to publish it.

On Tuesday, The Huffington Post will release its second e-book, “How We Won,” by Aaron Belkin, the story of the campaign to end the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. It joins e-books recently published by The New Yorker, ABC News, The Boston Globe, Politico and Vanity Fair.

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