As invited guest to the Empyre mailinglist, Andrew Murphie, Mat Wall" Smith and OSP will discuss design in relation to this months’ topic Publishing In Convergence.

From the introduction by Morgan Currie:

"Despite the recent hype around ebooks, the future of publishing remains
uncertain. The growth in markets for electronic distribution has resulted
in a messy and highly competitive ecology of digital rights management
systems, conflicting file formats and devices, and an online book market
driven by new players such as Google and Apple. Meanwhile, pirate networks
for ’liberated knowledge’ have opened other avenues for delivering content
(whether legal or not), while the open access movement has increasingly
consolidated as a legitimate alternative to corporate publishers. These
are the realities of media convergence as perpetual crisis, or at least an
ongoing entanglement of interests, and a situation full of potential for
the future of the book."