Joe Konrath’s scenario of the future, where an ebook can fluidly move across devices while being consumed in a variety of ways throughout the day, inspired me to write my own user experience scenario.

Below is a look at what kind of person might buy a personalized anthology, how a retailer might offer the service, and what it might cost. When it comes to personalized anthologies, the technology and the content already exist; it just requires some large-scale cooperation among retailers, publishers, and authors, which may take some years to work out.

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Cory Doctorow, the sci-fi author and ebook pioneer (at least when it comes to DRM and pricing), announced this month in his new Publishers Weekly column that he’s about to embark on a bold publishing experiment. He says he’s going to publish his next book on his own, or at least without a publisher’s help, as he’ll be calling in favors from professionals to help with artwork, editing, and printing. He’s going to use all the unconventional distribution formats he’s now familiar with, and he’s going to make a profit.

Best of all for the rest of us, he says he will document the process and share the results, which means any writer or publisher curious about digital distribution will be able to benefit from whatever happens. I’m rooting for ya, Doctorow.

I also think it might be interesting to look at this experiment in the context of three other online distribution experiments.

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