The Jamaican OverDrive is harbinger of things to come and outcome of a confluence of a few trends.

First, there is insatiable appetite big publishers (such as McGraw-Hill, Random House, and Harper Collins) have developed to converting their hitherto inertial backlists into e-books. Gone are days when e-books were perceived as merely a novel form of packaging. Publishers understood cash potential this new distribution channel offers and value added to stale print tomes in conversion process. This epiphany is especially manifest in education and textbook publishing.

Then there is maturation of industry standards, readers and audiences. Both supply side (title lists) and demand side (readership) have increased. Giants like Microsoft have successfully entered fray with new e-book reader applications, clearer fonts, and massive marketing. Retailers - such as Barnes and Noble - opened their gates to e-books. A host of independent publishers make good use of negligible-cost distribution channel that Internet is. Competition and positioning are already fierce - a good sign.

The Internet used to be an English, affluent middle-class, white collar, male phenomenon. It has long lost these attributes. The digital divides that opened up with early adoption of Net by academe and business - are narrowing. Already there are more women than men users and English is language of less than half of all web sites. The wireless Net will grant developing countries chance to catch up.

Astute entrepreneurs are bound to take advantage of business-friendly profile of manpower and investment-hungry governments of some developing countries. It is not uncommon to find a mastery of English, a college degree in sciences, readiness to work outlandish hours at a fraction of wages in Germany or USA - all combined in one employee in these deprived countries. India has sprouted a whole industry based on these competitive endowments.

Here is how Steve Potash, OverDrive's CEO, explains his daring move in OverDrive's press release dated May 22, 2001:

The more paranoid point at music industry. It failed to co-opt emerging peer-to-peer platforms (Napster) and to offer a viable digital assets management system with an equitable sharing of royalties. The results? A protracted legal battle and piracy run amok. "Publishers" - goes this creed - "are positioned to incorporate encryption and protection measures at very inception of digital publishing industry. They ought to learn lesson."

But this view ignores a vital difference between sound and text. In music, what matter are song or musical piece. The medium (or carrier, or packing) is marginal and interchangeable. A CD, an audio cassette, or an MP3 player are all fine, as far as consumer is concerned. The listener bases his or her purchasing decisions on sound quality and faithfulness of reproduction of listening experience (for instance, in a concert hall). This is a very narrow, rational, measurable and quantifiable criterion.

Not so with text.

Content is only one element of many of equal footing underlying decision to purchase a specific text-"carrier" (medium). Various media encapsulating IDENTICAL text will still fare differently. Hence failure of CD-ROMs and e-learning. People tend to consume content in other formats or media, even if it is fully available to them or even owned by them in one specific medium. People prefer to pay to listen to live lectures rather than read freely available online transcripts. Libraries buy print journals even when they have subscribed to full text online versions of very same publications. And consumers overwhelmingly prefer to purchase books in print rather than their e-versions.