Sony has thrown in the towel on the ebook business and turned its customers over to Kobo. This has unleashed speculation that Nook will soon do the same. If B&N were really forced to choose between the investments they need to make in their stores and the investments required to compete in digital delivery, it […]
Four years into the ebook revolution: things we know and things we don’t know
One could say (and I would) that the ereading revolution is coming up to its 4th anniversary since it was late November 2007 when Amazon first released the Kindle. There had been dedicated ereading devices before then, including the Sony Reader — in the market when Kindle arrived and still here, if not wildly successful […]
Guessing wrong about the future happens to all of us; here are 2 times it happened to me
One very lucky thing for those of us who are in the habit of predicting the future is that very few people keep score on us. We mostly keep score on ourselves. When I want to remind readers of something I said previously, I link back to it and call it forward it again. But […]
A Frankfurt reminder: the world is getting smaller
At the conclusion of another Frankfurt Book Fair — my thirty-somethingth — here is something I actually knew before but have taken on board in a whole new way: there is an enormous gap between the US and everyplace else in the Western world (at least) in consumer ebook takeup and acceptance. Here is what […]
Learning some things at dinner in Sao Paolo
I was struck when I visited Australia three years ago at how the protection of thousands of miles of ocean had kept their book trade looking like ours did three decades ago. Prices of books were very high in stores and there were lots of stores and lots of independent stores. But the biggest moat […]