The world of book publishing is about to enter a period of massive change - and it's all due to the relatively recent growth in the popularity of both e-book readers and e-books. As a result of the growing popularity of e-book readers – such as the Amazon Kindle for example – e-books have very quickly been accepted by the public. It would be very easy to think of them as just another way to deliver written content. However, they may well be the largest single change to reading and publishing since Gutenberg's printing press.

Whilst that may sound a little melodramatic – the fact that e-books modify the traditional printing cycle is inescapable. In general, publishers release hardback editions followed, normally a few months to a year later, by the paperback version. It seems obvious that there is no valid reason why the e-book edition wouldn't be published at the same time as the hardback.

As e-books don’t use any paper, bindings or chemicals, and since they don’t require to be shipped - their selling price should be less than a conventional physical book. What this means is that the e-book version could be made available at a reduced price concurrently with the hardback book. That could have a serious impact on the profits of the big publishing houses – especially if you consider that the people who own e-book readers are likely to be fairly heavy readers.

There have already been some fairly heated discussions between Amazon – who wanted to price all e-books at $ 9.99 or less – and the publishing houses. At one point, all books by McMillan were withdrawn from the Amazon website. Things seem to have quietened down a little right now – but it looks likely that e-book prices will fall in future.

But there are some positive aspects for publishing firms. Obviously they will have reduced costs when selling e-books, so they should be able to find a way to profit. Alternative techniques for promoting books will also be opened up.

The Amazon library of Kindle books is the biggest by far available on the web at the moment. They have over 700,000 titles available – and there are a further 1.8 million out of copyright books which are available as free download from the Amazon Kindle store. Most of these were published before 1923, but there are other examples of modern books which can be downloaded at no cost.

You can often see publishers offering modern, sometimes recently published, books for free. This might be done for a short period only - say a fortnight or so. It allows them to showcase a new title or author and the increased number of downloads will help the book to move up the best sellers list. After it has climbed the rankings, publishers can start charging for it and benefit from the added publicity. You may also find the first book in a series being made available for free. The idea is clearly that readers enjoy the opening title and then go on to buy further titles in the series.

No doubt both of these promotional methods could have been employed with conventional books. However, it would be a lot more expensive, and therefore a more risky, undertaking. It seems clear that e-books are here to stay. Some publishers will try to defend their profits by slightly restrictive measures. Publishing houses which are able to adapt to the new digital publishing market conditions by offering value to both readers and authors will be the ones who survive (and thrive).