Nice historical analysis of how Gutenberg’s press brought evolution more than revolution. And much more great nuggetage to be found; the best historical overview I’ve seen in a while. I’d like to copy the whole thing here, but perhaps best for you to visit the site, The first printed books came with a question: What [...]
Seth Godin announced to great fanfare and hubub in the blog world that he will no longer publish his books through a traditional publisher.
Some see this as a big author shaking off the shackles of evil publishers; some publishers see this as Godin taking advantage of the investment traditional publishing made on his behalf, by [...]
The Montreal/Texas band Arcade Fire has just released a new album, Suburbs. Arcade Fire is about as big as indie bands get, and their plan is to stay indie – as far as I know.
You can buy the new album here:
http://www.arcadefire.com/ …
And some interesting notes about how you can buy:
* Premium digital ($7.99)
* CD + [...]
In the publishing industry there are any number of bugbears people point to to explain the collapse of the universe. Amazon gets it’s share of blame. But Amazon does what every business ought to do: it identifies needs/desires among customers and tries to answer those needs/desires with as little friction as possible.
Here’s what Jeff Bezos [...]
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, [...]
Towards a world of smaller books, from Crooked Timber:
The length of the average book reflects the economics of the print trade and educated guesses as to what book-buyers will actually pay for, much more than it does the actual intellectual content of the book itself…
and:
All this may be changing as we move towards an electronic [...]
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 [...]
I was asked to do BookNet Canada’s “Interviews with Industry Innovators.” I did. Here I am, looking a bit pudgier than seems reasonable:
Link at Blip.tv.
I’ve got a “Publishing Year in Review” post up over at the BookNet Canada Blog, with a few predictions thrown in at the end:
I started off 2009 with a trip to London, to attend BookCampUK – an unconference about books. While there were big rumblings of fear and hand-wringing about the arrival of the digital [...]
Does design matter? Yes:
What does that mean for books?
