Curation schmuration, sup?

I am getting in early to discuss the internet buzz word curation before you are sick of reading about it and flick the X button.
I am on about the concept of curation as it applies to eBooks and and eMedia.
If you have a different take on curation, feel free to share.
I will talk about eMedia but the analogy with eBooks is clear.
The theory behind the selling of media and indeed almost  all capitalist commerce is the notion of scarcity.
People are eager to buy goods and services because they are scarce.
But media and books as internet products are in plentiful supply . Consumers would need several lifetimes to inspect every available item. In these circumstances  how do consumers make a choice? One significant way is they turn to a curator.
The metaphor alludes to an art exhibition curator who selects which product the public will see. The curator sometimes explains their choice and at other times presumes credibility in the eyes of the public.
Here is another explanation http://www.servantofchaos.com/2011/07/curation-is-the-new-black.html
The main two ways consumers view news on the net is through aggregators and email alerts.
These are both methods of curation where headlines and the first par of a story is selected FOR YOU and presented for your inspection.
The aggregators often make their curation choice based on unsophisticated surveys of your reading interests while the email alerts from newspapers recommend stories based on news-value judgements of journalists.
Based on an inspection of the headline and first paragraph, you make a decision whether to consume the full story.
A curator builds credibility every time a reader is satisfied with a story they have opened.
Let's move on to eBooks
Both the writer and reader of eBooks need to find reliable curators to guide them across libraries bulging with thousands if not hundreds of thousands of titles.
The opponents of eBooks say this is why standards are threatened as quality gets lost in the clutter.
Proponents of eBooks - and I am one - say let's join the wild ride to see how curation evolves.
What do you think. Has curation any relevance to you?

Them ol' Publisher blues

I came across another mainstream publisher at a conference the other day - very depressing. I don't mind so much they are in denial that ebooks will send them spiralling into obsolescence just like epublishing sent the big  record companies down the drain. If I was in their shoes, I would be dreading the future of the ebook.
What gets up my nose is the high and mighty attitude of the BPs -Big Publishers. Ebooks will savagely  lower the standard.  New authors will not be nurtured.
Hello: the standard has been dropping over the past 40 years. A mainstream publisher could not sell a novel of ideas to Socrates. That is if they were interested in trying.
New authors have to pay for their own editing and acquire an agent themselves - things publishers used to do for someone they ``nurture''.
Bent Banana Books is my publishing hut, set up to promote local self-publishing throughout the world, aligned with global e-publishing.
It will develop a resource base of honest and reliable self-publishing facilitators, provide handy hints for emerging writers and promote ebooks of self-published authors.
Bent Banana Books will engage in the discussion on the future of the book, through its website and this blog.
I will post faithfully, every Wednesday  and Friday.
If you have a passion for books and their future, have your say on this space. If you need a topic: will a flood of ebooks lower the standard and prevent quality breaking through?