You know I had to

I could not let this article by Motoko Rich at the NY Times go without linking. It's kind of the whole point of this blog, right?

Note the quotes:

“I think books are still things, thank goodness, that people want to own,” said Michael Jacobs, chief executive of Abrams. “The package of the book and the way it feels is something apart and separate from being able to read it online.”

and later:

Some readers are already catching on. Mel Odom, a writer and father of five in Moore, Okla., ordered a copy of “Shooting War,” because he “wanted something I could put on my shelf.” Mr. Odom, who also bought his youngest son a copy of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” after he read the entire thing online, added: “There’s nothing like holding the weight and smelling the paper.”

The article has a few stories about people putting things online and then selling it in book form later. It makes a quick, somewhat buried point about there being many bad examples of this as well, when bloggers' books dissapoint.

But all in all, the point is that things can work online and later in print. On the academic end of things, check out MIT Press and their advancements in making titles Open Access. Pretty exciting stuff.

It's snowing hard here in Boston, so more later perhaps...