Publishers embrace digital age.

Byline: Simon Duke

July 02--Compared to many other pockets of the media industry book publishers have so far enjoyed a pretty good digital war.

The internet revolution has wreaked deep and lasting damage on the music business and has shaken the newspaper, magazine and broadcasting worlds to their very foundations.

Ever faster and ever more ubiquitous web access has exacted a very heavy toll, leaving many of the great beacons of British cultural life -- such as EMI -- facing a bleak future.

But amidst this unprecedented chaos, the book industry largely continues in its cultivated and idiosyncratic way -- notwithstanding the apparently endless appetite for celebrity memoirs.

Yes, independent bookshops have become an endangered species in the wake of …