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 [...]
[mirrored at Peter Brantley's shimenawa blog] I’ve spent the last few days in New York, and had the pleasure of meeting with various interesting folks. About which more anon, separately. Many of the conversations revolved around digital books and the future of publishing — what form will books take? Would they be downloadable objects, or [...]
Michael Cader was kind enough to alert me to a Forbes story about Nike http://www.forbes.com/sportsbusiness/forbes/2008/0211/082.html This demonstrates another aspect of a theme I think is the dominant reality of how media is changing, from the 20th century’s “horizontal and format specific” to the 21st century’s “vertical and format agnostic.” The post explains that Nike used [...]