Since it was a bad year, we'll start with the bad news. 
What were some of the disappointments or overrated issues in 2001? 
John Feldcamp, CEO of Xlibris.com: "2001 has not been about innovation, but about general devastation and retrenchment. In this new and very Darwinian world, the first crop of new publishing related companies has been massively selected for extinction and most real innovation will need to wait for a few more years." 
Laurie Rippon, a senior vice president at HarperCollins Publishers: "Obviously e-books (at some houses) were over-hyped, over-staffed and the accompanying 'death of the e-book' news is overreaction. The sad thing is that overblown expectations of a dot-com revolution and the idea that technology can conquer all, combined with a recession and a newly subdued country veering towards conservatism and fear, make it hard to continue the optimism and creativity that force us to change habits and grow towards something new." 
Linda Richards, editor of January Magazine : "I know a lot of people were disappointed that e-books didn't get the leg up it looked like they were going to get in 2001. But, it strikes me that e-books now are at the place, professionally, where the Internet was in 2000: The publishing industry has discovered that e-books aren't going to be a panacea. But this was a necessary discovery. After that initial disappointment, you start building a solid foundation based on logical evolution and the only place to go is up." 
Cynthia Orr, librarian and co-founder of BookBrowser.com : "That the major publishers still can't see that working with librarians or distributors to figure out how to let libraries purchase or license their e-books, and let readers 'check them out' for free, would help build a market that otherwise threatens to just collapse for lack of interest. Librarians have been careful defenders of copyright over the years ... and our budgets are far higher than they realize." 
David Eide, editor of Oasis 2001 : "That there wasn't a bigger migration of talent from print to e-publishing. Obviously, this is connected to the very low sales of e-books and lack of capital. It proved to me that e-publishing is going to be digging in hardscrabble for awhile."
Mark Gross, president of Data Conversion Laboratory : "That the major e-book ventures are closing down -- or really slowing down. My reading is that, in fact, they've now realized that e-publishing is really just publishing, and it's counterproductive to have a separate competing company to develop electronic books." 
What was the best news of the last 12 months? 
Michael S. Hart, director of Project Gutenberg : "The number of e-books available for free download on the Net will pass 20,000. The number of Net users will start heading towards 1 billion." 
Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink, author, college professor and board member of the Electronic Literature: "The growing tendency for online zines and journals to begin publishing hypertext in 2001. Since writers have always depended on the network of little magazines to build an audience and establish a publication base, the growing strength of the online zines represents a valuable resource for writers and a new source of material for publishers." 
Diane Greco, president of Eastgate.com : "The Lite Show, a project of Boston Cyberarts, featured low-bandwidth Web animation and motion graphics. The most interesting thing about this juried exhibition was how these artists rose to the unique challenge of using bandwidth as an artistic constraint." 
Mark Gross, president of Data Conversion Laboratory : "What people forget is e-books were going strong before they were called e-books and they went on to sweep into many aspects of business and publishing. Most of this has gone unnoticed by the media. Probably because it has been a kind of backdoor revolution. To cite one example: Print law books are just about gone. People don't use them in law firms anymore. It's all electronic books or online. A revolution has occurred, but no one's noticed." 
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