Trying to keep up with the changing face of publishing and book distribution can be exhausting. Now, in what seems like an inexplicable reversal to me, Barnes and Noble is considering spinning off the Nook. By that, I believe, the company means they are considering launching another company, perhaps a stand alone corporation, perhaps a subsidiary, to take over the technological research and development and the actual manufacturing of Nook devices. I'm sure the hope is that this sort of move will help Barnes and Noble itself appear to be more profitable, as the cost of producing devices has resulted in corporate losses in recent months. I'm sure it is also hoped that such action will result in attracting additional investors for what is sure to be a sustained need to put added money into making more sophisticated e-readers that will keep up with the competition - Amazon's Kindle, i-Pad, Google's reader, and Kobo. But what would actually happen if Barnes and Noble and Nook part ways?

As things have evolved, Barnes and Noble's physical stores and its digital business are enmeshed. Each store has a major display of Nook devices and promotional materials about their e-reader and e-reading. Continuing that relationship might prove difficult if the companies are separate. Nook has developed relationships with publishers which, may or may not continue if the device and the content become detached.

As I look back at the posts I have published this year, it seems 2011 was filled with turmoil, transition, and anxiety for the book publishing industry and with growth and opportunity for authors. The industry continues to change, and for those who ran the show for decades, if not centuries, change is threatening and frightening. But most people agree that the net gain for authors and readers outweighs the costs of transition.

There have been casualties indeed: Borders was forced to close all its stores and declare bankruptcy. There has been turmoil. The law suits and legal action continue to expand as the Author's Guild vs Google suit and settlement remains unresolved. Now we have class action suits filed against large publishing companies and Apple for price fixing on e-books; opponents and proponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act being brought before a House committee make dire predictions about copyright laws; and the FTC asserts its power to protect privacy by auditing Facebook and Google's practices on an ongoing basis. And there has been uncertainty. As digital books are made available for lending through libraries, copyright and compensation issues are yet to be resolved. Large publishing companies remain anxious about how e-book sales, which are dominating growth, will impact profits and business plans.

At Stanford University in 2005, Steve Jobs delivered his now famous commencement address. He spoke of the importance of making every day count, of the benefits of failing at something important in life and starting over, and the rewards of following your passion. Specifically he spoke of the influence a course that he took at Reed College, after he had dropped out, had on his life and his career: 

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus, every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.