The line between book and Internet will disappear

An API is an "Application Programing Interface." It's what smart web companies build so that other innovative companies and developers can build tools and services on top of their underlying databases and services.

We are a long, long way from publishers thinking of themselves as API providers -- as the Application Programming Interface for the books they publish. But we've seen countless times that value grows when data is opened up (sometimes selectively) to the world. That's really what the Internet is for; and that is where book publishing is going. Eventually.

I don't know exactly what an API for books would look like, nor do I know exactly what it means.

I don't know what smart things people will start to do when books are truly of the Internet.

But I do know that it will happen, and the "Future of Publishing" has something to do with this. The current world of ebooks is just a transition to a digitally connected book publishing ecosystem that won't look anything like the book world we live in now.

Source: O'Reilly Radar