More than two decades into its digital transition, book publishing has evolved so that a capital-intensive infrastructure is no longer a requirement to successfully develop a book, or a list of books, and bring the books to market. This has resulted in a self-publishing segment, so far almost entirely author-driven, that is substantial in reach […]
Amazon share grows and big publishers make more money
The financial reports of the major publishers have been following a pattern for some years now. Sales are about flat but profits have been steadily rising. One explanation for that fact is that the management of the major houses have been diligent about adapting their businesses to the new marketplace configurations or, as the saying […]
Words-to-be-read are losing ground to words-to-be-heard, a new stage of digital content evolution
“Words-to-be-read” must now become a content category, along with still images, video, and audio. Audio includes “words-to-be-heard”. We are in what must be the early stages of a reordering of primacy among these varieties of “content for delivery and consumption”, which is distinguished from “content for interaction”, or the world of “gamified content” along with […]
Hats off to Amazon
When the story of how Amazon came to dominate the consumer book business is written ten years from now, there will need to be a chapter entitled “September 6, 2012”. Of course, that was the day that Judge Cote approved the settlement agreed to by HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster and began the process […]
Explaining my skepticism about the likelihood of success for a general subscription model for ebooks
In a prior post, I observed that the apparently-successful subscription offerings for books were in niches. And I said I believed that a more general subscription model wouldn’t work for ebooks the way it has seemed to work for music (Spotify), movies and TV shows (Netflix), and audiobooks (Audible). By that I meant two things. […]