The estimable Clay Shirky has written a lengthy piece called “Amazon, Publishers, and Readers” on medium.com saying, essentially, that an Amazon-dominated world would be an improvement over the Big Five “cartel”-dominated world of publishing we have today. This is an apples to oranges comparison. The Big Five are not nearly as broad a cartel as […]
Sony exits and the ebook business loses an original player
Sony has thrown in the towel on the ebook business and turned its customers over to Kobo. This has unleashed speculation that Nook will soon do the same. If B&N were really forced to choose between the investments they need to make in their stores and the investments required to compete in digital delivery, it […]
The ebook marketplace is a long way from settled
When we put on conferences, we sometimes book speakers because of who they are, or who their company is, but we also do our best to make sure the content of their presentation will be useful to our audience. So I had booked Matteo Berlucchi, the CEO of the British ebook startup Anobii, to speak […]
We’re getting SaaS-y, going Hollywood, and starting to plan Digital Book World 2013
It is hard to believe that we’re starting to plan the fourth annual Digital Book World conference, which will be held January 16-17, 2013 at the Hilton in New York City. But we are. The first DBW was held in 2010. Planning for it began the June before when David Nussbaum and Sara Domville of […]
What’s the greater fear for publishers? Amazon or piracy?
Pottermore changed the game this morning. Congratulations to Charlie Redmayne, their CEO. The “aha” moment for me was when somebody on a listserv mentioned they’d bought Kindle editions of the seven Harry Potter books which, it had been announced, were available only from the Pottermore site. Penny drops. First thought: Hnh? How did that happen? […]