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 organisations. 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.
The books occasionally snap up valuable spots on best-seller lists ? ?Open Secrets,? an e-book published by The New York Times, landed in the No. 19 spot on The Times e-book nonfiction best-seller list in February.