oh gee, how forward-looking!

(congratulations if you picked up
that i was being sarcastic there.)

some day -- and that day is _not_ very far away --
someone will be smart enough to start _charging_
publishers to give electronic versions of their books
to the public, in order to stimulate hard-copy sales.

after all, with so many publishers putting their books
online for free, how do you break through the clutter?

so yes, publishers will soon _pay_ ordinary people to
read their books in electronic form, because that will
cause (some of) those people to buy the paper version.

(you'll probably have to test people, to make sure that
they did read at least the first few chapters, before you
fork over any check. but yes, you _will_ fork one over.)

and some publishers might even be smart enough to
realize they can maximize hard-copy sales that way.
there will be no more cost-efficient way to do that...
(it'll make the buying of advertisements look stupid.)

of course, long-term, publishers might also find that
getting people familiar with e-books will _cannibalize_
their business of pushing paper. but it will be too late.

of course, the paper-book business will die _anyway_
-- if you can't make money by doing it, corporations
automatically stop doing it, it's a funny thing, that is --
so the more-conservative publishers will not end up any
more successful than those who cannibalize themselves.
(in fact, their fall off the cliff will be even more dramatic.)

you heard it here first: "we'll pay you to read our book."

-bowerbird