And the headline read:

Dorchester Drops Mass Marketing Publishing for E-Book/POD Model.

This article was in Publishers Weekly on August 3rd. The gist - retail sales for mass market - read paperbacks - fell 25%. It's a tough economy and apparently Dorchester believes that the e-book market is more viable than the mass market.

Dorchester isn't alone in this thought. I recently attended the Romance Writers of America's National Conference in July and more and more e-publishing is the thing of the future.

Now, we won't see the demise of the actual book. Just as radio didn't die with the invention of televisions, books won't die with the advancement of e-publishing. Instead, there will be some interesting advancements in all forms of publishing.

For example, CSI creator Anthony Zuiker released a "digi-novel" (a book-video-website mashup) in 2009. So combining the different media seems to be the next "new" thing.