Not long ago, publishers and booksellers dreaded that the Information Superhighway would put them out of business. It could still happen-the day authors figure out how to get paid for getting downloaded. Meanwhile, both corporate leviathans and specialty small fry are setting up Web sites. Click around and you can find best-seller lists, reviews, sample chapters, even writers’ tour schedules. Some 200 physical bookstores now have toes in the virtual water, from California’s U.C. Irvine Bookstore, which finds itself selling technical books to Japan, to the Hard-to-Find Needlework Bookstore in Newton, Mass., which put up a Web page last year. “I’ve had macrame books in the printed catalog for years and couldn’t sell a one,” says owner Bette Feinstein. “On the Web I’ve had orders from Italy, Spain, Chile and a lot from Singapore and the Philippines.”
