Amazon is a marvelous conglomeration and delivery system for products of every imaginable function. But the book 'business' is really not the same as the sale of lawn rakes or adapters for telephones.
When you work on a text of a lesser quality, as the interpreter or the delivery person, you are obliged to try to fill it out as you see so many people do in lesser work.
What we believe is going to be very important is the delivery of traditional software and services and hardware over the Net. That's a form of electronic marketplace.
There are still a lot of cases in the world where you order something and then you see 'Delivery will be in 8-12 weeks.' This is because of the faxes and forms that still exist.
I think that the continuity of what I do as an editor with what I did when I started out 40 years ago is very direct. The delivery system is changing and will continue to, but the actual interaction between publisher and author is exactly the same.
Writers sometimes write things for me and I like to see what they write because I want to see what their take on my delivery is or what they think that I can do with something. So I kind of leave that to them.
There are so many devices that can receive video, creating complexities, because suddenly you can have a TV, laptop, smartphone, pads. And they are of different sizes. It's clear that you need to standardise and get a much more efficient TV delivery.