Purchase on demand is the new POD and is likely to restructure the publishing supply chain.

OK, here’s an optimistic observation for publishers. Let’s say more and more real book readers find, “you know, reading on this iPhone, Android, smartphone I have is pretty good…” And the marketplace for reading on the phones grows quickly. Plenty of skeptics for that idea, sure. But not impossible. (Keep this in mind: three doublings [...]

Empires, by definition, begin their decline at their peak.  Today Amazon bestrides the publishing world like Caesar, and it may seem far-fetched to think of this company slipping from its dominant position.  There is some doubt, however, that Amazon can continue to augment its control over so many facets of the industry.  Although there may [...]

 Random House has announced that it will be creating a Web site to market selected titles as print on demand. This has come under criticism in a number of quarters, not because POD is not fully appreciated but because of the truism that no trade publisher has a brand that means anything to a consumer. [...]

I volunteer at my local College Women’s Club Booksale where we accept donated material most of the year and then sell it twice a year. The money goes to scholarships for local girls. Ours is one of the oldest and largest such sales in the Northeast. We are the rock bottom of the used book and [...]

Now that both the Kindle and the iPhone are out, it’s interesting to look at the very similar business strategy behind the two products. I think most of the E-Ink ebook readers in the market are doomed to failure. They don’t do enough, and what they do, they do poorly. The world gave up on [...]

I’ve been pondering the ebook situation with respect to the upcoming (Friday) launch of the iPhone App Store. One of the problems hardware devices like the Sony Reader and the Kindle have to contend with is competition with other reading platforms like the paperback book, or the library book. It’s hard to spend $300 on [...]