The book industry is overcome by the e-book revolution; so far this year Amazon is selling more e-books than hardcover books. And on Friday, BookBrewer announced a partnership with Borders book store, which will give independent authors the opportunity to publish and sell their e-books through Borders' eBookstore.

 On the surface this development looks like another of the great partnerships driving self-publishing above traditional publishing methods, but I would argue otherwise.

I believe this development is similar in nature and scope to the much maligned iPhone "Featured Apps". While the development process itself is open for all on the iPhone, their ability to pick and choose the Featured Apps has lead to a lot of discontentment from the development community.

I think its pretty obvious that Borders is looking to create the same situation with self published e-Books. By catering to the "needs" of the writing community by adding such features as being able to make a RSS feed into a book, they appear to be fighting for the individual writer. But now that they have the book in their system, they can decide where that book is put on their system and choose to push one e-book over the other.

Of course, for the writers, this system in and of itself is just another venue for their book to sit on in the hopes that it will receive any attention at all. Books are notoriously either extremely popular, popular with a small niche audience, or extremely obscure. 

So while a writer may be placing their text on this system, it may be a "service" for the customers that they find through other more conventional promotion means. One tried and true method gaining traction in the Recession society is having discount book sales at both internet and real world locations. This method can bring in readers of many different spectra, from the discount shopper to the hardcore reader.
 
The moral of the story? Writers beware! There are hucksters everywhere who would happily use your text as backdrop for the products that they will really be selling!