The Future of Publishing

The thing that has amazed me the most these past months is the onslaught of publicity given to Andrew Keen. Keen, for those who haven’t had the pleasure, has written a book. Following the traditional author trajectory, he has embarked upon a round of appearances and media carnivals. Given that the circus has been in town for more than a month, it’s safe for you to assume that Keen’s continuing success is due more to schtick than quality prose. Are “professionals” truly the epitome of excellence for writers, musicians, actors? I do not begrudge Mr. Keen’s right to make provocative […]

So Borders has seen Barnes & Noble and raised the stakes: rather than ad nauseum reprints of classic, public domain cash cows, novels, Borders has gone ahead and published an original novel by a living, breathing author. Living, breathing authors are useful because they can do things like publicity. You don’t see Charles Dickens out flogging his work, do you? Publishers could invest the outlandish sums they spend on co-op advertising in other forms of marketing. It is only a matter of time before Amazon takes this step. In fact, if Amazon hasn’t been actively (or casually) discussing this very

Let me share a sad, sordid tale with you. Be forewarned: I do not look good in this tale and admit to what some might consider an ethical lapse. If you are not willing to have your illusions shattered, read no further. The sad thing is that the industry has the technology to get this book to me. Many months ago, I engaged to do a joint review of a favorite book with a like-minded friend. Technically, this type of review is known as a “lovefest”. We wanted to share our appreciation of the story with the world. At the

Now don’t get us wrong, we think that Richard Charkin is a bright, savvy man. We would have, at one point, even suggested that he understood the difference between search and anonymity. Sigh. Let us try this one more time. Search is not about Google — search is about making sure your customers find you. Publishers are sitting on loads of content, more content than they realize (we do not believe that all publishers have put forth the necessary effort to inventory and catalogue all that they own). Several houses are embarking on what we like to consider brilliant moves

Regular readers will recall that “death of the novel” stories appear in traditional print media (also, non-traditional non-print media) with comforting regularity. Sort of like Spring cleaning without the Windex. Somehow, there is an editorial guideline out there that equates “reading elsewhere” with the “death of reading”. We dispute this assertion. Those who declare that the novel is dead are living in caves. Sort of. Based on our careful, exhaustive research — some of which took us to the furthest corners of the globe, places hot and cold — we have determined that the story is as much a part

We spend quite a bit of time at Booksquare headquarters talking about what’s wrong with the publishing industry. These discussions usually focus on the industry’s seeming fear of new technology and the fact that, some days, it seems like the future of publishing will never happen. We suspect that it’s not so much a fear of the future as it is an overly cautious nature. That and the fact that the existing business model and marketing methods seem to work just fine — for now, at least. It’s that sort of comfort with the status quo that drives us to

From what we can tell, attending the Book Industry Study Group’s recent “Making Information Pay 2007” conference was like reading BS every day. Except there was probably less snark. And less wine. Reading the wrap-ups is like reading our posts. Is that going to stop us from highlighting a few key points? Of course not. Repetition is good for the soul. This is not a case of if you build it, they will come. As you will recall from previous conversations, while the publishing industry was snoozing, a large portion of the world moved online. Not the entire world, but

BS Headquarters (also home to Medialoper HQ) has been buzzing with the news that EMI has struck a deal with Apple to sell DRM-free music via the iTunes store. While this is not the unprecedented move some media would have you think — Kirk notes that labels have being doing this via eMusic for many years, it’s an interesting acknowledgment that DRM is not the bee’s knees. EMI made a bold choice, given the pressure from industry peers to stand arm and arm with DRM. At its core, Digital Rights Management (“DRM”) is very simple: sell product to consumers while

As part of our regular contemplation of the bookselling process, we recently turned our attention to branding. Branding, we believe, is a big problem for publishers. It is also, not surprisingly, a big problem for other major media, but we think it’s a problem for publishers especially. As all the beauty that is Web 2.0* is being embraced by publishers, they still haven’t quite figured out a sad truth about consumers: the publisher is the least important part of the name recognition mix. We especially like that the new publishing venture is focused beyond the traditional paper-and-cardboard book model. We