Over on Word Munger, I'm blogging about the impact of ebooks. There hasn't been much speculation yet on what the effect of ebooks will be (I suspect there will be more when Sony's new reader is released to the American market), and most of it has focused on the idea that "E-paper could save newspapers a bundle on printing and distribution."

Wow! Newspapers will save a bundle? Gosh! Let me be the first in line to buy a $400 reader so newspapers can save a bundle! A better question is this: what will a newspaper be when it no longer involves paper? Will the 2034 equivalent of a “newspaper” even exist? Why should it? The reason they exist now is because they are a cheap way to distribute news. Surely with technology like e-books, we can come up with an even cheaper way.

In my blog post, I speculate about some of the other implications of widespread adoption of ebook readers, not the least of which will be democratizing the process of book distribution.