The Wall Street Journal was the first to announce, on Monday, (behind a pay wall, but Google “Publisher Delays E-book Amid Debate On Pricing” and you’ll get it) that Sourcebooks CEO Dominique Raccah was holding back the ebook publication of a new hardcover YA novel, Bran Hambric, scheduled for release this September. Raccah’s explanation to the […]
Archives for July 2009
“Vertical” versus “service”: semantics, nuance, or dueling metaphors?
Andrew Savikas of O’Reilly Media and I definitely agree on some things, the principal one being that it is going to get harder and harder for people to get paid for content. And it is going to become more and more necessary for a publisher to be branded as “of value to the community” to […]
Google settlement opponents need to be careful how they win
The debate about the Google settlement, like most of any consequence or intellectual interest (what the government should do about health care or energy, for example) actually engages a wider range of knowledge than most of us have. But we feel comfortable having an opinion about what we should do about health care or energy […]
Malcolm Gladwell, please meet John Wooden
The sui generis Malcolm Gladwell wrote a provocative piece in the May 11 New Yorker, “How David Beats Goliath”, that demonstrates that the underdog can often win by adopting an unconventional strategy. The examples were numerous, and included Lawrence of Arabia, but the central point-maker was a girls basketball team. Their coach, an Iranian national […]
Reality changes more slowly than I like to think
I did a panel yesterday at NYU as part of the summer publishing program on “New Visions” for publishing. The group was put together by Leslie Schnur. I shared the stage with four very articulate co-presenters who gave very diverse views of the future. Our audience was a full room of about 50-100 (I wasn’t […]