When I first started closely following the big changes in the publishing industry, James Bridle’s blog BookTwo was one of my first stops. And since then I’ve continued to watch with great appreciation as James has pushed and poked at “publishing.” The passion that drives his endeavours – passion for books, for words, for writing, [...]
We’re starting a new feature here on Book Oven, a Friday interview series, every two weeks. We’ll be talking to people who are doing interesting things in the bookish space. Our first interviewee is Liza Daly, of ThreePress Consulting, and the woman who knows all about ePub. Liza, along with Keith Fahlgren, recently launched the [...]
Marion Maneker, columnist at The Big Money, responds to Penguin CEO John Makinson’s WSJ OpEd. He makes the point more clearly than I’ve yet seen it that the book industry suffers from “oversupply and too much risk.” It’s not digital per se that is the real problem; but digital just makes it easier for others [...]
There was a big dustup between Macmillan and Amazon over ebook pricing this weekend. Here is Macmillan CEO John Sargent’s take. And Amazon’s announcement that they were backing down. And Charlie Stross’ great outsider’s view.
Whoever won, ebook pricing is a hot, tough topic. I’ll guess this chess match isn’t over yet, so we’ll [...]
My hypothesis is that DRM is bad for the publishing business, and hence the publishing business should ditch DRM for that reason. The people who are actually studying the impacts of DRM vs no-DRM – O’Reilly and Brian O’Leary leading the charge – seem to suggest that hypothesis is correct. For now, anyway. My read [...]
CBC Radio show Spark, hosted by the lovely Nora Young, has an interesting segment with indie game designer Cliff Harris, who asked “pirates” why they were pirating his games.
One of the top answers is: “Because of Digital Rights Management…”
It’s not scientific by any means, but I hope Brian O’Leary & others who *are* doing scientific [...]
California to force uni textbooks to come in electronic formats:
Companies that sell textbooks to California universities must offer electronic versions by 2020, under a new state law…
The law, Senate Bill 48, says any individual or company selling textbooks to the University of California, California State University or private colleges must make them available electronically [...]
Canadian book retailer Indigo launched Shortcovers, a great mobile reading app and ebook store, at the beginning of 2009.
At the end of 2009 Shortcovers changed into Kobo (one presumes to better capture the international market?):
We have changed our name from Shortcovers to Kobo. Kobo is an anagram of the word “book” and we [...]
Has anyone played around with YouVersion?
It’s:
A revolutionary online Bible that enables community and collaboration like never before. Organize important content; share thoughts, links and videos; and collaborate with others.
There is a quite great mobile app app as well – for the iphone/blackberry/android etc.
So:
- You can comment on any verse of the bible at their [...]
Mashable recently published a list of “15 Twitter Users Shaping the Future of Publishing,” compiled by Maria Schneider. I was tickled to be on the list (as @hughmcguire … though most of my publishing tweets happen on @bookoven). It was a great list, and I agree heartily with all the selections (though there were a [...]
