From the beginning of Digital Change Thinking Time, which for me goes back to the mid-1990s, “subscription” has been high on the list of future expectations. That’s natural. The subscription model has emerged as the dominant one for cable TV (although there is still some pay-per-use) and Netflix works that way as well. Lots of […]
Archives for May 2011
Who would buy a print publisher? An internet vertical creator!
Nolo Press, the Berkeley-based publisher of books and software on the law for laypeople, announced this week that the company has been acquired by Internet Brands, an internet company that builds verticals. This news should be seen as another one of those things happening for the first time that will almost certainly happen repeatedly in […]
But what if it gets really easy to deliver apps or enhanced ebooks?
This is an unusually brief post today, but some worthy observations don’t require long explanations. I wrote nearly 18 months ago about my concern that publishers’ interest in enhanced ebooks would bring on a repeat of the commercially disastrous CD-Rom era of the mid-1990s. Of course, since the CD-Rom era, a lot has changed. * […]