Richard Nash's Twitter feed is a great place to find stories about the future of content in general and the future of the publishing industry in particular. In the last 24 hours, he's posted a link to a great interview with Eric Garland, who theorizes about the future of the entertainment industry and how content providers can compete with free content online:

The cute answer, which is probably the truest answer, is that growing a sector is a privilege and not a right. There is no right size. There is no correct or God-given size for any sector. Why do we get to make movies that cost $300 million to make? Because we have found venues where people will spend more than $300 million on the result. If people spend only $50 million then the price of a movie must be $49 million or less.

I think in today's dollars no one could make "Gone With The Wind" because at the time this movie was made when everyone went to the movies. It was something like 79 percent of the population. The cute answer is that movies will get smaller...

Q: I feel like I just heard the doctor give his prognosis and the patient is a goner.
Garland: It's just "Lose weight man (laughter). Get on a treadmill, change your diet and lose weight."

In addition, Nash links to this story about the future of social publishing, which I'm fairly sure is going to be the next big thing to hit the publishing industry after the normalization of ebooks, which is coming this winter.

One thing Nash doesn't link to is this frustrated writer, who is upset that online magazines don't have 100% acceptance rates of their submissions. He says "...I DON’T SEE WHY the site publishes LESS than it RECIEVES. Surely the basic rules of SUPPLY and DEMAND apply here? If a slue of challenging and interesting work is offered — publish it. Give the reader a CHOICE. Stop setting your own agenda and being so FUCKING FUSSY." Nash doesn't link to this piece because it's not smart, and Richard Nash only links to smart things.