Merrian Webster defines publishing as: “the business or profession of commercial production and publication of literature, information, musical scores, or sometimes recordings, or art.” This essay will review publishing since its beginnings in the 16th century and describe how 21st century technology has disrupted the publishing profession. This article will also discuss the current situation and the trajectory of the industry for the next decade. Publishing itself being a vast universe encompassing literary books, fiction, non-fiction books, newspapers, magazines, journals, periodicals, music, art, film scripts, plays theater, software, blogs, etc., both in print and electronic form. This essay will be limited to the discussion of literary books, fiction and non-fiction. We won't spend a lot of time discussing the history of books, but it's worth quickly mentioning that the history of books goes back about 5,000 years, when the ancient Egyptians wrote about a plant growing along the Nile called Papyrus . Sheets of papyrus were glued together to form parchment. The Codex, as a book form, dates back to the late first century, but it gained popularity in the Christian community in the 3rd and 4th centuries. This book format was more economical because both sides of the writing materials could be used, it was portable, searchable, and easy to conceal. Handwritten books began to supplant scrolls in antiquity. Until the end of the Middle Ages, the vast majority of books were written in monasteries by scribes of high social status. It is for this reason that the vast majority of books in the Western world have religious content. The introduction of the printing press in 1455 was a disruptive technology that led to an explosion in the paper medium......okWikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_bookNew: Statistics website book sales (including e-books): http://www.publishers.org/main/PressCenter/Archicves.htm Press Center website: http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/print_library .htmlNew: Book Sales Statistics Website (including eBooks): http://www.publishers.org/main/PressCenter/Archicves/2010_Oct/AugustStatsPressRelease.htm Wikipedia Website: http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/History_of_the_ebookForbes.com magazine article: knowledge@Wharton Electronic textbooks? You bet McGraw-Hill is introducing a new custom publishing platform: Create a Website: http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2010/10/11/mcgraw-hill-introduce-new-custom-publishing -platform-create/Business Week: Amazon's eBook Market Share to Fall as Industry Grows (Update 2)February 16, 2010, 4:17 PM EST