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 “stability”. The consensus about adult trade is that ebook sales have stalled or perhaps even receded, that print is strong, and that the big publishers […]
Are the tech giants too big to be good partners for book publishing?
An online discussion forum that includes publishers and librarians and tech people usually sends me several emails a day. About 10 days ago, a conversation evolved about Google Book Search and the Google Library Project, two initiatives by the search giant that were initiated in the early part of the last decade. Because both programs […]
Considering the very wide range of digital change topics that should be candidates for discussion at DBW 2016
The challenge for the book business for the past decade has been rapid and less-than-predictable changes in the ecosystem because of digital. There are two underlying shifts that fundamentally alter the ecosystem: people substituting ebook consumption for print book consumption and people substituting online purchase of printed books for buying them in stores. These two […]
Much-trumpeted survey proves the opposite of what the surveyors seem to think it does
Do library eborrowers also buy ebooks? Well, stop the presses. OverDrive, the leading aggregator providing libaries with ebooks, and Library Journal* have done research that proves that they do. (*My error hereby corrected: American Library Association, not Library Journal.) The survey results are interpreted as evidence that the big publishers are making a terrible mistake being […]
Does Pew study prove ebooks in libraries are safe for publishers?
I haven’t seen this written elsewhere, but the latest Pew ebook study seems to me to confirm that the publishers are doing the right thing for sales by constricting the availability of many of the most attractive books from library shelves. That conjecture on my part comes from a data point that some may interpret […]