Dear All,

It seems like the year has just begun, and yet May is already growing gray and Book Expo America looms.

What a different world publishing is from just six months ago!

The Department of Justice is pursuing the "Big Six" publishers for colluding to set e-book prices. E-books are changing the pace of publishing (according to a Times article from Sunday 13 May), inspiring authors to write more books faster. And Barnes & Noble and Amazon keep releasing new-and-better reading devices, scrambling to capture a market that, if anything, appears to be growing.

All of which is to say that the market is in a tumult and seems to be changing day to day. Nothing is certain except that the fundamentals of publishing—good books drawing readers and building great word-of-mouth leading to sales—remain key. Whether readers find a book as an array of pixels on an e-ink screen or printed on pulpwood paper and bound between covers, their reasons for picking it up and sticking with it are the same: A good story, told well.

Everything else is mere window dressing.