1. How do the properties of the internet influence the book publishing industry?
E-book can be sold and distributed to reader without having the reader stepping out of the house. Internet enables reading materials to reach out to more readers at faster rate and more easily. It also allows books to be published online with less effort and cost compared to printing them to be sold in book stores. Reduced books prices tends to help books to sell better, as the barrier on acquiring and disposing the reading material is reduced. On top of that, e-books will not run out of order, unlike books where the maximum amount of books sold are limited to the amount of books it is printed.

Searching of books can be made easier by searching for a certain genre on the internet as everything is digital. This makes less popular books to sell better as most readers of a genre don't mind reading anything off the shelf of their favourite genre, as long it is relatively cheap.

There are writing forums available on the internet, allowing writers to publish their work and seek feedback from more people compared to writing it personally. This has pros and cons in terms of work being criticised or praised before the book is even published. Also, this allows the name of the writer to be well-known on the internet before publishing your actual work. 2. Is the Kindle a disruptive innovation? Justify your answer.
Disruptive innovation means a product created to destroy the existing market of another product that serves as a replacement of the earlier technology. Kindle is yet to be a disruptive innovation to traditional books because it is still a new innovation. People of older generations who are used to reading traditional books will never change to Kindle however people of generations who love to keep up with technology will adopt to this change easily. So if Kindle sustains another 10 years down the road, it will be a disruptive innovation as readers tend to take the easy way out and love the convenience of e-books.

However, on the other hand Kindle may not be a disruptive innovation if it is planned to 'destroy' existing e-readers like iPad and Samsung tablets. E-book readers will still tend to go for device of that has multi-function to avoid carrying to many devices when travelling. Kindle serves a particular purpose and is targeted at a niche market of low cost and mass e-book readers. So it can only serve as a substitute to tablets and not a disruptive innovation. 3. Christensen defines value networks as “the collection of upstream suppliers, downstream channels to market and ancillary providers that support a common business model within an industry”. How is the value network for e-books different from those for traditional books?
In terms of upstream suppliers, the logistics to deliver books is longer and most costly than e-books. This in return makes e-books having lower cost and priced more cheaply. Using the internet to sell books means there are no physical infrastructure needed to store and display the books. This also reduces cost of writers and publishers by selling e-books. At most they will have to charge a small fee of setting up a website and registration of the publishers domain on the internet.

Downstream channels to market include outbound logistics and sales marketing. E-books can be downloaded from the internet directly into the e-reader, which saves plenty of time and cost from the readers point of view. There will be a small fee spent on transaction of the book via internet payment, however it is still cheaper than selling traditional books in book stores. Marketing of e-book using internet can be done more effectively and at lower cost when the book can be advertised on the internet. This enables e-book to reach out to the right readers as the internet may be able to advertise materials base on the internet users' interest.

Finally, the after sales support of e-books is relatively simply compared to traditional book as e-books are soft copy that cannot be destroyed physically. If the copy of book is accidentally been deleted, a fresh copy can be downloaded using the account that was used to purchase the e-book. Unlike traditional books, if the reader happen to find out there is a problem (page missing or misprinting), the handling effort is much more compared to after sales support of e-books.