One of the key building blocks of my career was the six years I spent working on a program called “Publishing in the 21st Century” with Mark Bide and a team at Vista Computer Services (now Publishing Technologies) led by then-Chairman Denis Bennett, John Wicker (now at Tata Consulting Services), and Martyn Daniels (now at Value-Chain […]
What the powers-that-be think about DRM, and an explanation of the cloud
My last post stemmed from a single catalyst: my frustration with what I feel is the tendency of those opposed to the use of DRM to promote the straw horse that people who defend its use must believe that DRM prevents, or even largely discourages, piracy. I know that isn’t true of me and I […]
Why offshore ebook customers are so often frustrated
People of a certain age — mine — probably first encountered the world of rights as a content consumer with pop music in the 1960s. British albums, which came in sleeves that were flimsier cardboard than American album sleeves, routinely had 15 songs. American albums had 12. And the British would put songs out as […]
Will juvie publishing remain a book business as tablets take over?
This post will discuss a realization I had even before this morning’s news about the developing e-products scene. I’ve always been a skeptic about enhanced ebooks, based on seeing my hunch that they wouldn’t work come true 15 years ago with CD-Roms. But it is increasingly obvious that CD-Rom type thinking will work very well […]
Amazon adds a feature they ridiculed when Nook announced it a year ago, and the implications
Amazon announced on Friday that the Kindle will make a “lending” feature available, allowing “owners” of a Kindle file to enable somebody else to read the book or magazine or newspaper for 14 days. Each purchaser of each ebook will be allowed to make only one such loan one time. They will not have access […]