Richard Curtis Interview Episode 696

Every industry has its digital revolution. Music had MP3s. Film had streaming. Newspapers faced the internet. But one of the most fascinating—and least understood—transformations happened in publishing. For more than 500 years, books remained remarkably unchanged. Authors wrote, publishers printed, bookstores sold, and readers turned physical pages. Then, seemingly overnight, everything changed. E-books emerged, Amazon transformed bookselling, self-publishing exploded, and the entire publishing ecosystem was forced to reinvent itself. Today's guest didn't just witness that revolution—he helped lead it. Richard Curtis is a legendary literary agent, entrepreneur, and founder of one of the world's first e-book publishing companies. In his new book, Digital Inc.: From Print to E-Book—Inside the Transformation of the Book Industry, he tells the remarkable inside story of how publishing entered the digital age and how those changes continue to shape the way we write, publish, sell, and read books today. We'll talk about the early days of e-books, the resistance from traditional publishing, Amazon's disruptive influence, the rise of digital authors, and what the future of books may look like.