Here in the sleepy old UK a band called Arctic Monkeys has been quietly proving that the music business has changed dramatically in the last few years. To be brief, they have got themselves a number-one hit record without benefit of a big record company behind them. Just free giveaways on the web, live gigs, and word of mouth. Or, to be more precise, word of web.
Val Landi sees this as a harbinger of publishing's future. So do I. But I don't think it's going to happen quite as fast or be quite as dramatic as some.
There's hints of this already... Charles Stross, recent Arthur C. Clarke nominee, released his novel online, despite it being published by big boy Orion (see http://tinyurl.com/8gu2v), and fellow nominee Geoff Ryman got his internet novel 253 picked up by Flamingo...
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