This post began being written a couple of weeks ago when I recalled some specific misplaced expectations I had for the self-publishing revolution and started to ponder why things happened the way they did in recent years. It turns out a big part of the answer I was looking for provides clarity that extends far […]
The Digital Book World program this year covers the waterfront of the digital transition for book publishing
(This is a longer-than-usual Shatzkin Files post reviewing the topics and speakers for the 26 breakout sessions at DBW 2015. It serves as a checklist of “things to think about right now” for book publishers living through the experience of digital change. The entire program is here. We decided not to link to each and every […]
Print book retailing economics and ebook retailing economics have almost nothing in common
There has been a lot of conversation lately about the differences between wholesale pricing and agency pricing for ebooks and about what constitutes a “fair” division of revenue between publishers and retailers. Since the economics of bookstores have been generally misunderstood for years, it is not surprising that the understanding of what changes make sense […]
More on atomization: why the new publishers are coming
The most recent post here laid out a future for trade publishing that will be less and less about traditional publishers and more and more about non-traditional publishers delivering books into the marketplace without the financing or “approval” of a profit-seeking publisher. That’s a radical change from the industry we’ve seen grow over the past […]
But what if it gets really easy to deliver apps or enhanced ebooks?
This is an unusually brief post today, but some worthy observations don’t require long explanations. I wrote nearly 18 months ago about my concern that publishers’ interest in enhanced ebooks would bring on a repeat of the commercially disastrous CD-Rom era of the mid-1990s. Of course, since the CD-Rom era, a lot has changed. * […]