Readers who have been following publishing’s digital transition for two years or more will recall the situation in 2010 when five of publishing’s Big Six switched over from selling their ebooks on wholesale terms, by which the retailer sets the price to the consumer, to agency terms, by which the publisher sets a price that […]
An aspect of the Amazon-Apple battle the tech world doesn’t care much about
Almost two years ago, I wrote a post which continues to be one of the most-read in the history of this blog, the point of which was that the business model disruption (called “agency”) prompted by the iPad would have more impact on the ebook ecosystem than the device itself. I’m happy to repeat that […]
The ebook marketplace could definitely confuse the average consumer
There are no links in this post. I refer to searches done in several ebookstores, but the pages reporting results would be dynamic, so creating a link wouldn’t assure you’d see the same results as I saw. You can replicate the searches and you may or may not see the same thing because the facts […]
If you like irony, you must love the publishing world of today
Anybody who doesn’t find the publishing business interesting in its time of digital change is simply not paying close enough attention. No matter what story we’re focused on, scratch the surface (or scratch your head) and you find you are pondering something else. This was a week for the press to be asking me (and […]
Publishing is living in a world not of its own making
A big ebook shoe dropped on Sunday. It dropped on Kobo first. And it has nothing to do with Borders. Kobo just delivered a new iOS (that’s Apple’s operating system for iPad and iPhone) app that no longer contains the direct link to the Kobo bookstore within it. That means that buying new Kobo books […]