The idea of an “Ebook Tipping Point” panel for Digital Book World arose when I wrote a blogpost last August https://idealog.com/blog/ebook-growth-explosive-serious-disruptions-around-the-corner on the occasion of the regular monthly release of the IDPF’s ebook sales figures. It was clear then that very substantial percentages of the sale of new narrative fiction and non-fiction were going to […]
A coming new obsession: how to handle a smaller print-book business
Here’s a prediction that has almost no chance of being wrong. Every major player in the trade book industry is about to develop a new obsession: how must our business model change when we reach a level of ebook sales that is dynamically disruptive to the print book ecosystem? This might not be exactly a […]
The Sourcebooks experiment with Bran Hambric: publishers in the early “establishment” stage of ebook adoption
In a post last week we reviewed what Sourcebook CEO Dominque Raccah did — announcing she was holding back the ebook publication of a new hardcover YA novel coming this September — and why she said she did it. Over the weekend, we posted about what we see as the four stages of ebook adoption. […]
Another copyright reshuffle that’s in the cards
Evan Schnittman at Black Plastic Glasses posted the final chunk of a 3-parter yesterday that contained a real shocker (to me) at the end. The 3-part post shows through Evan’s personal experience that a) we now insist that content come when we want it and how we want it and b) the very existence of […]
Times Book Review on advances, and related thoughts
The NY Times Book Review published a piece on advances online today to which I was first pointed by Twitter early this morning. I couldn’t tell whether author Michael Meyer was “for ’em or agin’ ’em”. On the one hand, he seemed to suggest that publishers are inclined to overpay, and he cites Public Affairs head […]