The ebook windowing controversy has subtext
It took me a couple of days of pondering this to come to my current understanding of it, but I now think that Carolyn Reidy of Simon & Schuster and David Young of Hachette Book Group, since joined...
View ArticleSerious disruption just over the near horizon
The monthly release of ebook sales figures by the IDPF provides a regular reminder about how fast this market is growing and it always provokes me to project the curve into the future and think about...
View ArticlePerhaps the revolution has reached an evolutionary stage
The dizzying pace at which US consumers were switching from print to digital couldn’t last forever. Based on the numbers being published by the AAP, with a huge assist in interpretation by Michael...
View ArticleSubscription services for ebooks progress to becoming a real experiment
My long-held conviction that broad-based subscriptions for ebooks were not likely to work is partly based on facts that are now changing. It is still by no means a slam dunk that ebooks must go where...
View ArticleThe big global publishers are integrating across both territories and languages
Since I posted this two days ago, one of the Big Five CEOs pointed out some things I missed that are important. These are addressed in a post-script at the bottom. Subscribers to the blog would have...
View ArticleWhat Oyster going down demonstrates is not mostly about the viability of...
The news that the general ebook subscription offering Oyster is throwing in the towel was not really a surprise. The business model they were forced to adopt for the biggest publishers — paying full...
View ArticleEbooks change the game for both backlist and export
There are two aspects of the business that ebooks should really change. One is that ebooks can really enable increases in sales of the backlist. The other is that ebooks will really enable sales...
View ArticleTemperature check from two US CEOs at Frankfurt 2017
It is no surprise that the public remarks at Frankfurt by Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle and Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy contain gems worth pondering. Book publishing has been...
View ArticleStability in the book marketplace does not mean commercial publishers...
Publishing reporters doing wrap up stories occasionally call me for impressions. From those conversations I have gleaned that the prevailing impression of where the book business is now is of...
View Article
