E-reading upheaval

You may have noticed, as a reader, as well as writer and a publisher, I am rather fascinated with where the digital publishing is taking us all, and whether there will still be much of a viable business there for anybody in twenty years.
So here are a couple of articles I found interesting.

Readers Are Abandoning Print, Yet Don’t Trust the Web, NYT article.

$200 Textbook vs. Free. You Do the Math., NYT article.
Scott McNealy is pushing free textbooks.

No E-Books Allowed in This Establishment, NYT article.
So many people can't tell the difference between a Kindle and a computer? Weird. But perhaps the problem is that the owner of the cafe didn't inform his staff of the reason for the no-computer rule. I don't know, but perhaps he feels laptops take up too much table space during the busy lunch hour. Whereas a Kindle takes up no more space than a paperback book.

Post-Medium Publishing, Paul Graham article. He poses the interesting question:

"Publishers of all types, from news to music, are unhappy that consumers won't pay for content anymore. At least, that's how they see it.
In fact consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren't really selling it either. If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn't better content cost more?"

I'm amazed by Paul Graham. With this article he once again makes me see a very central thing in a wholly new light. Highly interesting.