Amazon made a huge leap to the front of the iPhone line. Putting a Kindle reader on the iPhone for free through the App Store enables shopping at Amazon’s Kindle store and then a direct download into the iPhone (or into the Kindle, or both!) This means reasonably good book merchandising and one-click. The reader […]
Amazon’s competitive advantages: will they extend to an ebook world?
Will Amazon’s 70% or 75% or more market share of physical book sales online, plus the currently market-leading ebook reader, the Kindle, lead to a similar dominance of the ebook market as it grows? Despite the early lead of the Kindle, and the lock-ins provided by DRM, no interoperability, the largest selection of current titles, […]
Will You Recognize the Industry in 10 Years?
There is no doubt that the industry is in a period of significant transition. What can we expect 10 to 15 years from now?… Ten years from now, there will still be more books sold that were printed centrally and warehoused for sale than all other ways combined, but the end of that era will be in sight.
Where the Web Is Taking Us: The Inevitable Future and the Publisher’s Role In It
The basic premise under which we’re operating here, I’ll summarize for those of you have never heard or read my work before, is that horizontal, format-specific media entities are oh, so 20th century, and won’t work very deep into the 21st. The reason for that is the web, which almost forces vertical organization. Horizontal presentations across subject matter — like CBS, Random House, or The New York Times — were the products of a capital-intensive, limited-distribution universe
The Future of Books for Publishers and Booksellers
There is a big picture and a long arc within which our day-to-day activities are taking place. The 20th century consumer media were horizontal in their subject matter — that is, very broad — and format-specific. In the States, that means entities like CBS or NBC in television, The New York Times, or Random House. All of these companies provide content across the full range of human subject interests, but they pretty much stick to their formats: broadcast, newspapers, and books, respectively