Articles from May 2009

Pre-BEA Lazy Post: Round-Up Style

May 26th, 2009 · 2 Comments

As you all know, the entire United States publishing community is gearing up for BookExpo America 2009 (#BEA09). For a show that conventional wisdom pegged as leaner and smaller due to the economic downturn, there is a whole lotta buzz going on. So buzzy, in fact, that I’m packing my bags and heading to the […]

File Under: Square Pegs

Ebooks, Prices, Consumers, Choices. Again.

May 18th, 2009 · 28 Comments

Resolved: digital books will be a growing and important part of the reading mix of the future. Resolved: readers are not monolithic nor predictable and will expect digital books to be as flexible as they are. Resolved: digital versus print is not an either/or decision. Resolved: due to laws and insanity (not necessarily in that […]

File Under: Square Pegs

Digital Piracy: Redux

May 12th, 2009 · 15 Comments

Yay New York Times, you have discovered book piracy! And it is everything your dreamed and more. Oh and look: it’s authors who have never authorized their books for the digital marketplace who are being pirated. Piracy has been a fact of our lives for as long as we’ve had marketplaces. The NYT starts with […]

File Under: The Future of Publishing

Google Book Search: What Is Plan B?

May 5th, 2009 · 11 Comments

Among the truths we hold to be self-evident, there is this: the Google Book Search is an ugly beastie. A subset of entities, blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes, claimed jurisdiction for all interested parties and negotiated a settlement that, I believe, fails to achieve the goals of the parties who created the […]

File Under: Square Pegs