The hottest topic in publishing right now is the e-book revolution, in which authors rather than publishers are rewriting the rulebook. Since March 2010, the author Amanda Hocking has taken the traditional publishing world by storm, making millions from a series of young adult paranormal novels that she self-published.

Online retailers have sold more than 1.5 million copies of Hocking's novels. The majority of these were e-books, priced at 99 cents or $2.99 on online bookstores like Amazon, where the percentage the author retains from any given sale is far higher than it would be in traditional publishing.