This post is the second that is contemplating two big questions facing the publishing industry: When will the growth in Amazon’s share of the consumer book business stop? Who will be left standing when it does? Amazon applies pressure and generates angst among publishers from two directions. As they grow to be 30% or more […]
Which flies the coop first? the chicken or the egg?
There are lessons that can be taught or learned in one segment of publishing that can then apply to another. Well over a decade ago, Mark Bide and I were discussing the business model for journals. The way it works is that the university pays the professors a salary and rewards them with promotions and […]
Amazon’s news of hiring Kirshbaum is a helluva start for BEA
Amazon dropped a shoe last week when they announced their new mystery imprint, Thomas & Mercer Books, and started signing authors, including self-publishing evangelist, Joe Konrath. Last night they dropped the other shoe, which turned out to be a very heavy boot. They signed former Time Warner Publishing (the company that is now Hachette Book […]
The old publishing value chain got twisted a bit last week
Although the value chain in trade publishing for the last century has, for the most part, kept retailers between publishers and consumers and kept publishers between retailers and authors, that has never been 100% true. Doubleday covered the whole value chain in the 1950s, when it not only owned the Doubleday Book Shops and the […]
What will be the big digital issues in January 2011?
I have found a way to describe the difference between the Digital Book World conference we organize for F+W Media and the O’Reilly conference Tools of Change which I believe is accurate and is certainly not intended to be a pejorative description of Tools of Change. I go to TOC and I find it very valuable, but different […]