Thank you.
I find this conversation fascinating, because I started a magazine in 1995 when people were doing cut and paste. We used to have to get the light tables. We had a little Mac with a screen that big, and with PageMaker and QuarkXPress we suddenly were competing. Our stuff was as good as anything coming out of big professional houses. Now any kid on the block can put out stuff that looks fancier than what I could produce with my $1,000 programs. There is a dramatic change.
What doesn't change, though, is the need for content and the value of content. I found it interesting that you said the jury is out on digital and books and whether the book is going to disappear. It would seem to me that we always look at digital in terms of one factor in a market that's changing dramatically on a number of fronts. Many small Canadian publishers used to feed a number of small suppliers then. They were only supplying one or two large chains, and those large chains told them they had to supply a massive amount of books, so they did; then, of course, all those remainders would go back, which would put them out of business. The small publishers couldn't feed one or two giants the way Random House could.
With regard to e-books and Google, do you not think that the issue--and you mentioned quality--is that at the end of the day, people still want to have something they can hold and something they can read? We blow through it on our BlackBerrys and we read all kinds of content, but to read a book is an experience. Don't you think that's why people fork out the dollars?