Amazon’s introduction of the Kindle in 2007 was followed rapidly by other ebook systems — Kobo, Google, B&N’s Nook, and Apple’s iBook — and widely-available print-on-demand capabilities for printed books offered by Ingram (Lightning Print was already a decade old) and Amazon’s CreateSpace. Amazon had long exploited price as a weapon in the marketplace, discounting […]
The “Big Change” era in trade book publishing ended about four years ago
Book publishing is still very much in a time of changing conditions and circumstances. There are a host of unknowables about the next several years that affect the shape of the industry and the strategies of all the players in it. But as publishers, retailers, libraries, and their ecosystem partners prepare for whatever is next, […]
Things are calmer than they were in the book business, but change is a constant
Among the shifts that have been taking place in publishing houses over the past decade is an increase in the head count dedicated to marketing and a decrease in head count dedicated to sales. This reflects the reduction in the number of bookstore accounts and the transfer of “discovery” from store shelves to digital search. […]
Anybody Press is the new member of the Big Six (for ebooks, at least)
Bowker reported last week that 12% of the ebooks being bought now are self-published. There was skepticism about the methodology from The Digital Reader and Good e-Reader says Bowker’s data should be taken “with a grain of salt”. But the exact number doesn’t matter; the trend does. The share of the consumer ebook dollar going […]
Unbundling in the book business: the fourth big trend
A few weeks ago, I wrote that there are three big forces driving the future of publishing: scale, verticalization, and atomization. I was wrong. I had forgotten my own blogpost from last September when I identified another trend that belongs with the first three: “unbundling”. The book business, in the trade segment I follow most […]