Facts of Life time:<p>You cannot control who reads your book. Once it's "out there" it's going to be all over hell and back. It might be illegal, it might suck, but there you have it.<p>So find some things you <i>can</i> control and work with those. You can control who gets to see your book first -- that's a highly honored place. You can control who gets to provide feedback as you write it, or who gets to name the characters, or who gets to appear inside the book.<p>You can control how interactive the book is -- you could have selected special people role-play some of your characters and provide you with live arguments about what the character "really" would do in a situation like this. You can mix video, games, and 3-D immersion to make the book more of a sensually-rich experience (and harder to copy because it doesn't fit into a neat category). You can even set up an online market to have readers decide which topics/plots they think will make the most money -- and cut them in for a small piece of the action.<p>Don't weep over the things that are gone. Concentrate on what works, mix in several ideas, and run with it. Some of these ideas are old and hackneyed (multi-media books, for instance) but with the right mix you might just pull it off. Look at how many times 3-D flopped before Cameron picked it up for Avatar. Like Cameron, you have to keep the business model moving or it will easily be overtaken by technology.<p>It's a great time to be a writer, but probably pretty scary too. We IT guys have been in this constantly-changing business model stuff for some time. Welcome to the party.