The first Publishers Launch Conferences show outside the United States, “A Global Perspective on Digital Change”, will be at the Congress Centre in central London on June 21, with the Publishers Association serving as our partners in putting on the event. We also owe special thanks to the PA’s group of Digital Directors, who were […]
The subscription model for ebooks hasn’t emerged yet, but it will
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 […]
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 […]
Conceiving issues that will gestate in the next nine months; planning for 2012 Digital Book World
The fact that Publishers Launch Conferences will stage half-a-dozen or more events before our next big multi-day Digital Book World blowout next January doesn’t change the DBW calendar. Now is the time of year when we have to start thinking about what the big issues will be at the turn of the year so we […]
It’s official: putting books in stores is a subsidiary right
The headline in a number of places was that Amazon was now aggressively going after exclusives for their Kindle line and actually bid against the publishers for Amanda Hocking’s trade books. The enabling component, as reported in Publishers Lunch, was that Houghton Harcourt is now Amazon’s trade book distributor. Except please don’t call it that. […]