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What Oyster going down demonstrates is not mostly about the viability of ebook subscriptions

September 23, 2015 by Mike Shatzkin 28 Comments

The news that the general ebook subscription offering Oyster is throwing in the towel was not really a surprise. The business model they were forced to adopt for the biggest publishers — paying full price for each use of a book with a threshold trigger at considerably less than a complete read while, at the […]

Filed Under: Atomization, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Global, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, rights, Scale, Self-Publishing, Subscriptions, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: 24Symbols, Amazon, Android, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Big Five, Borders, Carolyn Reidy, Entitle, Google, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Ingram, Ingram Internet Support Services, iOS, Kindle Unlimited, Kobo, KU, Macmillan, New York Times, Oyster, Penguin Random House, Rakuten, Russell Grandinetti, Safari, Scribd, Simon & Schuster

Asking whether Amazon is friend or foe is a simple question that is complicated to answer

March 15, 2015 by Mike Shatzkin 56 Comments

I’ve been invited to join a discussion entitled “Amazon: Friend or Foe” (meaning “for publishers”) sponsored by the Digital Media Group of the Worshipful Company of Stationers (only in England!) and taking place in London next month. I think the answer must be “both”, and I suspect that my discussion-mates — Fionnuala Duggan, formerly of […]

Filed Under: Atomization, Authors, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Global, New Models, Scale, Self-Publishing, Subscriptions, Supply-Chain, Technology Tagged With: 24Symbols, Aerbook, Amazon, Amazon Prime, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Big Five, Bluefire, Bookmate, Coursesmart, De Marque, Digital Media Group, Encyclopedia Britannica, Finitiv, Fionnuala Duggan, Google, Impelsys, Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, Kobo, London Book Fair, Michael Ross, Nook, Oyster, Page Foundry, Philip Walters, Random House, Scribd, Smashwords, Steve Jobs, Tizra, Waterstone's, Worshipful Company of Stationers

Penguin Random House does its competitors a favor by walking away from subscription

November 19, 2014 by Mike Shatzkin 30 Comments

I sometimes feel like I’m the only guy in town (NYC, but I’d include London too) contemplating out loud how Penguin Random House might use its position as by far the biggest commercial trade publisher to make life a bit more difficult for its competitors, which in the first instance means the Following Four: HarperCollins […]

Filed Under: Direct response, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, New Models, Scale, Subscriptions Tagged With: 24Symbols, Amazon, Bertelsmann, Bookmate, BookScan, FutureBook, Hachette, HarperCollins, Jonathan Stolper, Kensington, Kindle Unlimited, Macmillan, Nielsen, Oyster, Penguin Random House, Philip Jones, PRH, Scribd, Simon & Schuster, Skoobe, Ted Hill, The Bookseller, Tom Weldon, vendor-managed inventory

The motivation of the publisher-bashing commentariat is what I cannot figure out

September 29, 2014 by Mike Shatzkin 318 Comments

Once again this morning we wake up to a piece by David Streitfeld in The New York Times about Authors United and their ongoing effort to discredit Amazon. The message coming loud and clear from the legacy publishing establishment is that Amazon doesn’t appreciate, and perhaps doesn’t understand, the value that agents, publishers, and chain and […]

Filed Under: Authors, Digital Book World, General Trade Publishing, New Models, Self-Publishing Tagged With: "Wool", 24Symbols, Amazon, AuthorEarnings, Authors United, Barry Eisler, Bookbub, Chuck Wendig, David Streitfeld, e Unlimited, Hachette, Hugh Howey, Joe Konrath, Jonathan Nowell, Josh Schanker, Judge Cote, Judith Curr, Ken Auletta, Kindl, KOLL, Lee Child, Matthew Greenfield, Michael Cader, New York Times, Oyster, Russ Grandinetti, Scribd, Walter Isaacson

Subscription services for ebooks progress to becoming a real experiment

May 27, 2014 by Mike Shatzkin 16 Comments

My long-held conviction that broad-based subscriptions for ebooks were not likely to work is partly based on facts that are now changing. It is still by no means a slam dunk that ebooks must go where Spotify has taken digital music and Netflix has taken the digital distribution of TV and movies, but it looks […]

Filed Under: Authors, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, New Models, Scale, Supply-Chain Tagged With: 24Symbols, Amazon, Amazon Prime, Big Five, Book-of-the-Month Club, Carolyn Reidy, Evan Schnittman, Hachette, HarperCollins, Kindle Owners Lending Library, Macmillan, Netflix, Oyster, Penguin Random House, PRH, S&S, Safari, Scribd, Simon & Schuster, Spotify

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Mike Shatzkin

Mike Shatzkin is the Founder & CEO of The Idea Logical Company and a widely-acknowledged thought leader about digital change in the book publishing industry. Read more.

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Recent Posts

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  • Google knocked us out for a couple of days, but we’re back!
  • When a publisher might not do as good a job as a self-publishing author
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