Richard C. Wade is credited with inventing urban history as a field of American history. He taught at the University of Rochester in the 1950s, at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, and became — along with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. — one of two Distinguished Professors of History at the City University of New […]
Archives for March 2009
Writing about Clay Shirky writing about newspapers
One of the great thinkers about digital change is NYU professor Clay Shirky. I have been reading posts and articles from him for years and he is always cogent and sensible. He has just posted a very insightful piece about the challenges faced by newspapers. Shirky doesn’t explictly say that he’s exploring the “vertical/horizontal” dichotomy […]
The Book Business Ain’t The Music Business
Len Vlahos of the ABA is the latest to take on the noble but very difficult task of encouraging independent booksellers in the digital age. Independent booksellers face a challenge similar to that of publishers adjusting to the change we’re facing: the skill sets and predelictions that are useful for what they’ve been doing don’t […]
The author-publisher deal needs tweaking
I just want to riff briefly on a challenge; I am still thinking about what might be a solution, or even an approach to a solution. Here’s the challenge. We need some creative dealmaking between authors and publishers. The partnership is getting more complicated. Publishers (will always) need authors and (most) authors (still) need publishers. […]
Enhanced Ebooks, Part 3
This is the third and final post of a series which spells out a new ebook strategy for trade publishers, expressed in the form of a letter from the publisher to its authors. The first post — the beginning of the letter — expressed the publisher’s intention to invest in a database of digital assets […]