Clik here to view.
Why Amazon Dominates
I was reading a great article by Joel Gascoigne on the “Happiness Advantage” at and this brought to mind how Amazon out-competes publishers and other book retailers (no matter what you think about...
View ArticleShould Publishers Sell Direct to Consumer? One Good Reason: Data
Madeline McIntosh, COO of Random House (US) provided many interesting insights at the IDPF conference, organized by Bill McCoy during BEA12, but there were two comments that really stood out:1. What is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lessons from the ‘Penelope Trunk Affair’
This week, author Penelope Trunk went on a rant about how she left her publisher with her advance after determining that the publisher didn’t know how to market books online. Despite the dubious nature...
View ArticleClik here to view.
E-Reading in the London Underground and Other Places I Can Spy
Like most Londoners I spend a lot of time on the London Underground or “tube” as it’s affectionately known (“metro” or “subway” to most Americans). In fact most Londoners spend 30-60 minutes each way...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why Publishers Don’t Like Working With Start-ups
Gutenberg was a start-up entrepreneur once. Now he’s on stamps! Credit: rook76 / Shutterstock.comIt’s not true that all publishers don’t like working with start-ups, but as the founder of one such...
View ArticleIs there a Pearl Inside the Recently Launched Oyster? Challenges and...
Oyster, a start-up from New York announced earlier this week that it had raised $3 million from blue-chip venture-capital investors to create a “Spotify for ebooks”.The book industry took notice and...
View ArticleThoughts on Random Penguin From the UK
Some thoughts from the UK on the Penguin-Random House merger:- Random House Penguin can also be abbreviated to “Ruin” (credit to Ben Evans, a media and telecomm analyst from Enders Analysis for that...
View ArticleThe Sobering Economics of Ebook Subscription Services
I am always a bit skeptical about consumer surveys, because they paint too rosy a picture. Consumers are more likely to state that they might buy something at a certain price when asked versus when...
View ArticleFive Shades of Book Discovery
There have been two great and thought-provoking and much commented articles recently on the subject of new book discovery:1. Discovery is Publishers’ Problem; Reader are Doing Just Fine by Guy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Future of Goodreads under Amazon Ownership
Logo concept by Todd Goldstein.We don’t know how much Amazon has offered to acquire Goodreads but it probably was not a huge sum. In Silicon Valley, an exit valley between $10 million and $50 million...
View ArticleDoes Barnes & Noble Have a Future?
Barnes & Noble has had a terrible time recently. It even “lost” its CEO.There have been a lot of interesting suggestions about what Barnes & Noble should do to survive the storms that are...
View ArticleIs Amazon Invincible?
Apple suffered a stunning defeat in court over ebooks and previously we witnessed a bloodbath at Barnes & Noble for having gotten its ebook strategy wrong. This makes many wonder whether Amazon is...
View ArticleIs Amazon Asocial?
I recently wrote a post called “Is Amazon Invincible.” It was a bit tongue-in-cheek, because in the long-term no company is invincible. The post was actually an exercise in analyzing Amazon’s...
View ArticleNetflix for Ebooks or Spotify for Ebooks? Spot the Difference!
Launching an all-you-can-eat access model for ebooks is tough as nails. After all the economics for ebook subscription services are pretty sobering. New York City start-up Oyster launched its take on...
View ArticleWhy Are Ebook Start-ups Dominated by Men?
Tim Carmody, who writes for The Verge, noted that high-profile NYC publishing start-up Oyster was built by 8 men and not a single woman. Yes, that’s pretty typical, even though two-thirds of heavy book...
View ArticleWhy Authors Are Start-ups and Publishers Are Venture Capitalists — Now More...
We don’t think of the publishing industry as having much in-common with bustling Silicon Valley and the the way technology start-ups are funded and nurtured, but there are in fact some remarkable...
View ArticleStart-ups, Amazon and Going Outside the Publisher Ecosystem
In a very interesting interview with Jeremy Greenfield, Mike Shatzkin posits that big publishers don’t “need” start-ups. Start-ups in this context means “[high growth] technology start-ups”, as it so...
View ArticleCrossing the Digital Chasm
This Thursday, UK trade publication “The Bookseller” held its annual Futurebook conference, which was well attended not by book sellers, but by publishers. Off course there were also a motley...
View ArticleDiscoverability, Not Discovery, Is Publishing’s Next Big Challenge
Discovery has been and continues to be a regular buzzword at publishing conferences. Sadly, we saw no breakthroughs in 2013. Instead we saw the acquisition of Goodreads by Amazon and the very sad...
View ArticleDiscovery, User Experience and the Long Tail
There has recently been some debate as to whether the long tail for ebooks exists: — “Dispelling the Ebook Long Tail Myth” by Marceloa Vena, head of the digital trade book business at Italian publisher...
View Article