While the concept of printing-on-demand and the Espresso Book Machine will likely change the book publishing industry, another bomb hit the publishing world this week as well. I read about it at BuzzMachine.

Shane Richmond at the Telegraph Blog noted that the author of Random Acts of Reality, a blog about the experiences of an ambulance medic in London has compiled his posts in a book entitled, “Blood, Sweat and Tea.”

Stay with me on this. There are relevant dynamics at play here. From Richmond,

"Blood, Sweat and Tea is the first book (or blook, if you must) from a major European publisher to be published under a Creative Commons licence. Creative Commons is an innovative approach to copyright, which aims to allow creators to be more flexible about what people can do with their work.

In this case, the CC licence means you can go to the website and download a copy for yourself rather than buy one at the bookshop, though you can do that too.

Even better, people can adapt the book to their own needs and then share the results with others. One reader has already uploaded the book back to the publisher's site in iPod format - making the book accessible to even more people.

We may soon see Blackberry, audiobook or even braille versions. Who knows, perhaps someone will animate it."

The book is for sale but you can also download it for free. Are these blog entries worthy of a book deal? That is the point. Who knows? Because content can easily be created and shared, the audience – not editors, can decide what is worth keeping. The audience can then re-shape, aggregate or reconstruct the content to its needs - and all at a very low cost.