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Archive for the 'Publishing' Category

the Kindle and the iPhone dance

Sunday, July 20th, 2008

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 [...]

ebooks and the iPhone

Monday, July 7th, 2008

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 [...]

The Beatles Yesterday and Today

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

It was 51 years ago today, on July 6, 1957 (not 1955, as Time magazine subsequently reported), that on the fairgrounds in Liverpool, Paul McCartney met John Lennon for the first time. From that time through 1970, when the band formally broke up, musical and social history were made. Another kind of history was made [...]

The Trouble with Free

Sunday, June 8th, 2008

Paul Krugman has an interesting column on the future of publishing, in which he notes (citing Esther Dyson) that in a digital world where copying is easy and perhaps unstoppable, electronic books will be given away for free in order to promote the sales of other goods and services.
I am a great admirer of Krugman, [...]

Provostial Publishing

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

On one side we have user-generated content (UGC), exemplified by Wikipedia; on the other we have traditional publishing, which is characterized by an editor or series of editors (acquiring editor, developmental editor, copy editor, production editor), who review submitted material and make judgments as to its shape, argument, and suitability for publication. UGC is on [...]

SCOAP3: High energy physics goes open access

Friday, February 29th, 2008

SCOAP3 -
Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics at UC Berkeley, February 29, 2008. Converting an entire discipline — high energy physics — to open access. Live Blogging.
Rick Luce, Emory Univ.:
Open access has been seen as a solution to the pricing crisis. But over the course of a [...]

Open Access, re Journals vs. Books

Friday, February 29th, 2008

The Inside Higher Education link that Peter Brantley recently sent to a list, regarding the open-access Museum Anthropology Review, reminded me of some distinctions I like to make, when given the opportunity, about the culture of journals vs. the cultures of books. It pertains to the drivers of the different products, and the people [...]