Library in my Pocket.

The Nielsen statistics on book publishing and what makes a best seller have hit the proverbial web wall. It was hard enough to get a book published, let alone make any money from it and now the web wants a slice of the action. The telling statistics of over 1.2 million books published each year, with 950,000 of them selling less than 99 copies, another 200,000 selling less than 1,000 copies and only 25,000 selling more than 5,000 copies, added to a 25% decrease in sales, points to a need for new distribution channels if authors are going to find bigger audiences.

The Association of American Publishers has just released sales figures showing that e books have now surpassed print in all categories. Is this the death of "real books" or just a big bad nail in the coffin? E book sales are up 116% year on year and show no sign of slowing down when looking at February's figures of up 202% over last February. With audio books also on the increase it's pointing to a mobility need in our lives, and no matter how small they print that paperback novel, it's now obviously too big to carry around when compared with book readers and tablets.

One of the anomalies of all this downloading is the desire for many people to go back over their past readings and just as the iPod caused people to delve into the vast back catalogue of music, to rediscover and enjoy books long thrown away or out of print. Just as the iPod convinced people to carry their entire music collection in their back pockets, so will e readers compile vast libraries of e books for people to carry around in their handbags or briefcases.

So will this new landscape of $9.99 books throw up new best seller lists, will it give us a slew of new authors banging out books on their iPads and down loading them to Apple or Amazon to be sold via online marketing strategies? With the old guard selling their books at $25 - $30, online publishing is going to have to sell more books just to get to old revenue numbers, albeit without any trees affected and only bytes of information to carry on the virtual bookshelves. Still the profit line should be greater with no stock to carry aside from electronic bits and no end to shelf space.

Aside from the publishing world, the demise of books has a greater effect already felt locally, with Borders Books and Angus and Robertson filing for bankruptcy. What will become of your favourite corner bookstore? What about the humble furniture maker who no longer has requests to build book shelves or libraries, along with desk top publishing and snap printing operators? The fallout will be greater than anyone anticipated.

My question in all of this, is how many books are you prepared to buy before you decide to recommend and swap your latest read via the next Napster style, file sharing site? What will that do to the online book world? Is Justin Timberlake, sorry Sean Parker using his Facebook billions designing the next file sharing library as we speak?