February 2012

As more authors choose to do an end-run around the traditional book business by going the self-publishing route, traditional publishers are finding it harder and harder to justify their existence.

While some have risen to the industry’s defense — arguing that a good publisher helps refine a book, or acts as a curator by filtering out the lower-quality content — others are ready to do away with them altogether. In the latter group are authors like entrepreneur James Altucher, who argues that everyone needs to become a self-publisher, and J.A. Konrath, who says publishers are tied to a “broken, outdated and increasingly irrelevant business model.”

Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) anticipates introducing a bill this spring to make it easier for physicians to practice telemedicine in many states instead of applying for a separate license for each state.

The bill, which is still being drafted, would streamline licensure portability across state lines, according to Fern Goodhart, Udall’s legislative assistant. “Telemedicine is medicine, just practiced virtually,” she said at a Jan. 31 Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by the American Telemedicine Association (ATA), which advocates for use of remote medical technologies. Legislation may be needed because the private sector market has not generated medical license portability, even with the increasing adoption of health IT and networking capabilities, she said. Physician licensure has been a barrier to telemedicine because digital health care does not stop at state borders. A physician, who may supply treatment remotely, must obtain a medical license in each of the states where patients receive care via telemedicine, said Jonathan Linkous, ATA CEO.

Large-scale Army battlefield network tests last summer did not include mobile operation scenarios and did not feature robust attacks against the networks, the Defense Department's test organization said in its annual report to Congress.

The ambitious six-week Army network integration evaluation at White Sands Missile Range (NM) last summer, which had 3,800 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team put battlefield systems through their paces, cost $67 million, or roughly six times more than previous tests. The benefits from the larger tests remain unclear, said Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department's director of operational test and evaluation, in his annual test report submitted to Congress in January. The report said the Army tested 25 experimental systems in the summer of 2011, the expense of which stressed the service's evaluation capacity. In addition, the Army should develop operational scenarios in future evaluations, the report said.

Random House is now the only big six publisher to allow unrestricted access to all of its e-books in libraries—and it said it will continue to do so, though it is raising prices.

Random House met with the American Library Association in New York. “Our commitment to libraries, as imperative to our momentum, if not to our existence as publishers, is greater than ever,” said Random House spokesperson Stuart Applebaum. Random House’s reaffirmation of its commitment to e-books in libraries comes at a time when other big-six publishers are reassessing their policies.