I came upon the following article thanks to a lead from The Digital Reader, one of the blogs I read regularly. The article is from paidContent; I think the article makes some interesting observations and raises some interesting questions. I encourage you to read the article and consider its implications for the future of books.
Why online book discovery is broken (and how to fix it)
Someone got the bright idea to petition the White House to build a Death Star. In order to evoke an official response from the government, the petition needs to be “signed” by a minimum of 25,000 Americans. As expected, this petition crossed that threshhold. And so we now have the government’s official response, which is well worth reading:
This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For!
An American Editor 