I’ve been reading a couple of things lately that could restore, if you were in need of such a thing, your faith in print, and in the vitality of scholarship and publishing in the digital age. The publishing industry is in crisis—well, nearly everything these days seems to be in crisis—but you would hardly realize [...]

A few days ago I was riding home on my Xootr push scooter—yes, it’s a tough commute—when an old Ford Falcon pulled up next to me at the light. I noticed the undercarriage splotched with rust, the tires baring their sole, but what struck me most was the backseat, brimming with books, magazines, and yellowed [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Technology Review asked for my thoughts on Kindle. Here they are, slightly emended. No one can doubt that digitization and the Internet together with various factors intrinsic to the publishing industry will radically transform the distribution of books: books can now be transmitted like e-mail directly from writer to reader eliminating nearly the entire traditional [...]