The larger story here, and the one that these modest collaborative experiments point to, is about democracy — something that only becomes possible when people have access to the knowledge needed to make individual and collective decisions. Too often, the people writing about these topics obscure the true stakes, and ignore the potential offered by the existing cultural infrastructure of libraries, media organizations, schools, and communication systems.

For Pietsch, and many others, the book is not going the way of the record. Shoppers could rarely listen to records before they bought them in a record store, but they can thumb through a book.  Still today book purchases are often impulse buys; therefore, people still buy traditional books. Some evidence seems to support this position.  A recent Publishers Weekly article notes that Diamond Book Distributors reported double digit gains in 2012.  Simon & Schuster reported a bump in sales in 2012.