It looks like we’re going to have a bit of an unintended debate stretching across several of our panels at the Publishers Launch show in London. Since I’m the guy who put the show together, I can speak with authority to the fact that it was really unintended. But I consider it serendipitous and proof […]
The subscription model for ebooks hasn’t emerged yet, but it will
From the beginning of Digital Change Thinking Time, which for me goes back to the mid-1990s, “subscription” has been high on the list of future expectations. That’s natural. The subscription model has emerged as the dominant one for cable TV (although there is still some pay-per-use) and Netflix works that way as well. Lots of […]
Conceiving issues that will gestate in the next nine months; planning for 2012 Digital Book World
The fact that Publishers Launch Conferences will stage half-a-dozen or more events before our next big multi-day Digital Book World blowout next January doesn’t change the DBW calendar. Now is the time of year when we have to start thinking about what the big issues will be at the turn of the year so we […]
Don’t drown walking across the river
An aphorism that I picked up years ago that crosses my mind frequently in my professional life is that “a six-foot tall man drowns walking across a river that’s an average of three feet deep.” The point is that aggregates and averages might mask important truths. I thought of this when I read the news […]
Building a new-fangled conference program the old-fashioned way
There is certainly more than one way to build a conference program. I have been putting them together since long before I learned about the concept of “crowd-sourcing”. I’m a bit of a plowhorse about some things so the Digital Book World conference program comes together pretty much the same way as the first digital […]