Square Pegs

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! Let’s back up. Digital Rights Management (“DRM is not inherently evil, but it’s not winning friends or influencing readers. Any mechanism that keeps people from accessing their legally purchased books is a failure. The fact that there are no clear (or even standard!) guidelines related […]

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.) I was wrong. Oh, that’s so harsh. Let me soften the blow to myself: I wasn’t entirely right. Recently, I read an article entitled “Singe Purpose E-Book Readers are Dead“. This was moments after I’d been reading on my Kindle. In the backyard. In the

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 make the best of the situation. Very little light? Just squint and hold the book closer. I’m going to mess up your book As I’ve moved through this big, bad world, I have discovered one thing to be true. People go through a lot of

A few years ago, I wrote a post lamenting the lack of book people at the South by Southwest Interactive festival. Last year, as we know, a panel put together by a group of publishers missed its target, angering the audience. This year…wow, it’s a bookstravaganza. I am so pleased to see so many book folk stepping up to show that, yes, there are cool things happening in the publishing industry. The Interactive festival has come a long way from its geekish roots. Held concurrently with the Film festival, the conference brings together the most creative minds in media, from

There is no doubt we live in a time of change. Last week, I wrote that it’s never good for an industry when its customer base changes faster than the business model. It’s even more dangerous when you assume your product is recession-proof, technology-proof, distraction-proof. I was reminded of this again when I read David Ulin’s Los Angeles Times piece about the difficulty of shutting out the rest of the world and finding the time to engage in deep pleasure reading. He calls it “The lost art of reading”. I call it a shot over the bow.

One reason I focus on the world of digital publishing is because it’s the most exciting thing in the book world today. Oh sure, we might, collectively, raise an eyebrow or two at the humongous advances paid to authors like Yann Martel, especially given the current state of industry and the author’s own admission that he’s not expecting it to find a huge audience. We sigh over embargoed books by politicians who, ultimately, reveal so little in their books, it makes us wonder if the embargoes are a Hail Mary attempt to trick readers into buying a book before word-of-mouth

I have come to accept that our species is not fond of change. Some of us know it is inevitable and take the pain now rather than later, some simply refuse to change (I have seen this and it is awesome in its execution. Also, ultimately futile.), and some pretend to embrace change while carefully manipulating “change” to look like “same as it ever was”. It is that final group, I believe, who face the biggest letdown. How can authors leverage change to their best advantage? It is surely the rare soul in the publishing ecosystem who believes the business

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 show. Yeah, it’s a news round-up post!

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 order), digital books are not the same as physical books. Are we seeing that format is as much a choice of need as it is price? Yesterday, Motoko Rich of the New York Times looked at the price of ebooks, a topic too big for

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 class, the Authors Guild (AG) and the American Association of Publishers (AAP). Publishing professionals, what is Plan B? Let’s set the stage. Google has been scanning books for approximately five years. In 2005, the AG and AAP sued, creating a class action that included anyone