On Tuesday, for the first time in the five years I have been writing this blog, I did a post I would like to take back. (But in the interest of the public record, and because there were several comments of value, I’m leaving it up.) This is the post that I should have written […]
Sometimes one more calculation can make what looked first like revolution resemble what it really is: evolution
Author’s warning: this post is largely wrong! The following post was written based on a fundamental misunderstanding, assuming that Mark Coker’s post was talking about ebook sales in units when he was talking about dollars. So while there are some insights that may have value, the post is mostly wrong. I am leaving it […]
What I Would Have Said in London, Part 2
This is the 2nd of a 4-part post spelling out what I would have said if I had appeared at the Annual General Meeting of the UK Publishers Association on Wednesday, April 28, and not been cancelled by a volcano. Part 1 set the stage, spelling out how much change can take place in 20 years. […]
More evidence that the general trade business is getting harder
The shift from horizontal paths to audiences to vertical ones is a hard concept for people who have grown up in book publishing to accept. Most resistant, judging from the questions I get when I talk to book publishing audiences, are those who see book publishing as being about “writerly” books: “non-genre” fiction, belles lettres, […]