Booksquare

It thrills me that the book community is actively participating in the South by Southwest Interactive festival. For some, it’s an opportunity to explore the latest and greatest in technologies and trends; for others, it’s a chance to discover how others fit into the publishing ecosystem; and, for all, it’s a chance to connect with [...]

The Unicorn has landed, and like all mythical beasts, it has some magic powers. And like all mythical beasts, the legend may be greater than the reality. Of course, this depends on what you were expecting versus what you got. I expected that the iPad, at least initially, would be a larger, faster, more feature [...]

And it happened. Traditional book publishers were out in force at South by Southwest Interactive this year. I was pleased to see so many stepping outside the publisher bubble and into the crazy interactive bubble. I was even more pleased by the breadth of sessions my compatriots attended. Foursquare tells all, my friends! I don’t [...]

My mark of a good conference is how I feel when it’s over. It’s a given that I’ll be exhausted (I am an introvert after all), so the test is whether or not I’m inspired to do something. Read, write, create, think. This is how I felt at the end of this year’s Tools of [...]

A recent meme in publishing is that some readers are exhibiting a sense of “entitlement” about buying ebooks. I’d like to humbly offer myself as Exhibit A. It is true: I feel entitled to buy books. I insist upon it, actually*. Seriously, is it ever a good idea to disparage your customers? To treat them [...]

No matter where you stand on the various issues surrrounding the future of publishing, one thing is clear: without readers, what we do doesn’t matter very much. We sometimes take the privilege of our bookish lives for granted, forgetting how many people out there would give anything to be able to pick up a book [...]

Yep, it’s time to predict the future! I’ve pulled the BS crystal ball out of storage, buffed it to a shine, and gazed deep and long. Through the glass — which has no mystical ability, as far as I can tell — I saw the future splayed in a haphazard pile: a beautiful cookbook, my [...]

So last week, I attempted to jumpstart a new kind of discussion about managing digital rights, and, happily, many people were more than happy to participate. This week, I’m going to try to summarize and respond to what they said. Here’s a sneak preview: publishers, you’re doing it wrong, but not for reasons you think! [...]

Once upon a time, I believed that nobody wanted a single purpose reading device. Why, I wondered, would anyone want something that did only one thing*, albeit very well? It made no sense to me. We had the technology and all that. (And this despite my lifelong love affair with the classic single purpose reader.) [...]

When I was a wee reader, my grandmother assured me that reading in poor light would destroy my eyes. Actually, heredity was the real culprit, and modern science would save me from the tyranny of eyeglasses*. I admit it: I was one of those kids who had to read, and that meant I had to [...]