At the Tools of Change (TOC) conference (#toc in twitter), many conversations with no time at present to report them in detail.  But strikingly -- Overheard -- there is a growing sense that publishers have only two real customers: Google, and Amazon.  Even Barnes & Noble and Ingram, heavy weights in book distribution and retailing, might be seen through the lenses of the future (perhaps decades out, perhaps less) as dead men walking.  Strategy, in the highest executive offices in trade publishing houses, is being set in context of decisions made in Mountain View and Seattle.

The other shoe yet to drop is now Amazon's.  With all the buzz focusing on the Kindle-2 announcement, it's easy to lose the momentous release by Google of Google Book Search Mobile (GBS/m) for iPhone and Android.  This release is portentious as it suggests a great many new potential services, some foretold in the proposed settlement, and awaiting the incarnation of the Books Rights Registry.

These new services - PoD, PDF download, rent and acquire models - strike at the heart of Amazon's book business.  Amazon may have no choice but to advance its own digitization, perhaps cherry picking books with sales volume versus assuming the costs, delay, and legal risks of the "clear the shelves" approach taken by Google.

It will be interesting - since Amazon needs the same out of print, potentially (but unknown) in-copyright books that Google has settlement terms on - to see whether Amazon will:

1) File a commentary on the settlement demanding equal terms for other potentially competitive service providers (akin to James Grimmelman's (R5) and (R6));

2) Alternatively, seek contractual understandings with rightsholders once the BRR is established to achieve the same result;

3) Seek library circulation records to ascertain which titles might merit selective digitization.

I have heard now from multiple sources that a director for the Books Rights Registry (BRR) will be named in a near time horizon, but it will take many more months for the BRR to take wing, even supposing that the settlement is approved expeditiously.

As a friend said, the new few months will be very interesting indeed.