Another week of living in interesting times for the publishing industry, most of which is down to Google. Today sees the last day of freesheet The London Paper, unable to beat the combined might of Associated Newspapers and the Evening Standard. I’ll miss the Sudoku, but not much else.

More importantly, Google, the bête noire of the publishing industry, has been extremely active with three new initiatives, one of which ironically involves moving written work off the web and into the real world. It obviously has a lot to of initiatives to release before the end of Q3………

First, it launched Fast Flip, which repurposes digital content into a magazine format online – see my colleague Wadds’ Blog for more details . As a follow up it revamped the ad exchange technology bought with its DoubleClick acquisition, promising a better experience for both advertisers and publishers.

However possibly the most interesting story from the busy bees in Mountain View actually moves content off the web and onto the printed page. A deal with On Demand Books will see 2 million out of print books scanned by Google available to print via On Demand’s Espresso machine. Essentially a mini-printing press, Espresso produces a physical book, with the Charing Cross branch of Blackwells installing one earlier this year. When I went in then it was an expensive option, but these new books will be around $8 a pop, which potentially makes it mainstream – and a nifty source of revenue for beleaguered high street booksellers. See the blog of the wonderfully named Brandon Badger of Google for a video of Espresso in action.

So the ongoing Googlification of the publishing industry continues – let’s see what next week brings.