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Subscription models seem to me to be for ebook niches, not a general offer

July 16, 2012 by Jess 32 Comments

Another fledgling ebook retailing venture came through our office this month touting a subscription proposition. I told the entrepeneur “I’m skeptical of the subscription model for ebooks,” and he said, “I know”. We had a great chat, but I’m still skeptical. When I say that, I mean I’m skeptical that a general offering subscription model […]

Filed Under: Direct response, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, New Models, Publishing History, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: Angry Robot, Audible, Baen Books, Book-of-the-Month Club, continuity series, Discover a New Love, Disney Digital Books, Dzanc, F+W Media, Harlequin, iTunes, Literary Guild, Netflix, O'Reilly, Osprey, Pearson, Recorded Books, Safari, Sesame Street eBooks, Sourcebooks, Spotify, TED conferences, The Atavist, Time-Life Books

What I Would Have Said in London, Part 1

April 25, 2010 by Mike Shatzkin 11 Comments

I have gotten some requests, in comments and off-the-blog, to write what I was going to say to the AGM of the PA in an appearance I was supposed to make there on Wednesday, April 28. I felt terrible about having to cancel an engagement that was booked many months ago but it was tied into a […]

Filed Under: eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Industry Events, New Models, Print-On-Demand, Publishing, Publishing History, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Amazon, America Online, Bantam, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Cambridge University Press, Compuserve, Craig's List, Crown Publishing, Google, In Cold Type, iPod, iTunes, Len Shatzkin, London Book Fair, Princess Daisy, Prodigy, Sony Walkman, Yahoo

The Book Business Ain’t The Music Business

March 13, 2009 by Mike Shatzkin 18 Comments

Len Vlahos of the ABA is the latest to take on  the noble but very difficult  task of encouraging independent booksellers in the digital age. Independent booksellers face a challenge similar to that of publishers  adjusting to the change we’re facing: the skill sets and predelictions that are useful for what they’ve been doing don’t […]

Filed Under: eBooks, General Trade Publishing, New Models, Publishing, Supply-Chain Tagged With: ABA, bookstore digital strategy, Facebook, iPod, iTunes, Kindle, Len Vlahos, music business, social networking, Twitter

The Future of Books for Publishers and Booksellers

May 7, 2008 by Mike Shatzkin 1 Comment

There is a big picture and a long arc within which our day-to-day activities are taking place. The 20th century consumer media were horizontal in their subject matter — that is, very broad — and format-specific. In the States, that means entities like CBS or NBC in television, The New York Times, or Random House. All of these companies provide content across the full range of human subject interests, but they pretty much stick to their formats: broadcast, newspapers, and books, respectively

Filed Under: Speeches Tagged With: Amazon, B2B, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Berrett-Koehler, BookSearch, BookSurge, Borders, CBS, Chelsea Green, DAD, DRM, eBooks, Espresso, Google, Hachette, Harlequin, HarperCollins, horizontal, Ingram, iPod, iTunes, Kindle, LibraryThing, LibreDigital, Lightning, Lightning Source, Lingua Franca, metadata, Microsoft, MySpace, NBC, On Demand Books, ONIX, Open Social, Print-On-Demand, Random House, Rodale, SharedBooks, Simon & Schuster, Sony, television, The Long Tail, verticle, Wikipedia, XML

The Digital State of Play in the US

April 16, 2008 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

…in the 21st century, the net is flipping this on us. The net tends to self-organize us by subject niche, so the eyeballs and human bandwidth are linked to the niches, which are vertical, not horizontal. And because web interaction is about file exchanges, format specificity is meaningless. The file can hold text, art or photographs or other graphics, animation, moving images, sound, games, or code that helps us combine, sort, or tag things

Filed Under: Speeches Tagged With: Amazon, Apple, Audible, B2B, B2C, Barnes & Noble, Bookreads, BookSurge, Borders, CBS, Content Reserve, DAD, eBooks, Facebook, Hachette, Harlequin, horizontal, Ingram, International Digital Publishing Forum, iTunes, Kindle, libraries, LibraryThing, LibreDigital, Lightning, Market Publishers, Microsoft, Mobi, MySpace, Open Social, OpenSocial, Paml, Penguin, Print-On-Demand, Quamut, Random House, SharedBook, Shelfari, Simon & Schuster, Sony, SparkNotes, verticle, XML

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Mike Shatzkin

Mike Shatzkin is the Founder & CEO of The Idea Logical Company and a widely-acknowledged thought leader about digital change in the book publishing industry. Read more.

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