There is much discussion now about creating new online bookstores, especially for academic publishers. Some of these discussions, however, are not aligned with overarching trends on the Internet and risk creating something that appears to be out of date the moment it is launched.
In order to build direct-to-consumer sales, university presses should consider streamlining their publishing programs and focus on a small number of subject areas, even just a single area.
University presses cite a number of reasons to sell books directly to end-users. The principal reason is to establish a relationship with the customer. But once that relationship has been initiated, what business purpose does it serve?
Businesses are using more data than ever to inform decision making. While the truly large Big Data may be limited to the likes of Google, Amazon, and Facebook, publishers are nonetheless managing more data than ever before. While the technical challenges may be less daunting with smaller data sets, there remain challenges in interpreting data and in using it to make informed decisions. Perhaps the most daunting challenge is in understanding the limitations of the dataset: What is being measured and, just as importantly, what is not being measured? What inferences and conclusions can be drawn and what is mere conjecture? Where are the bricks and mortar solid and where does the foundation give way beneath our feet?
A nostalgic look back in the wake of the shutdown of Blockbuster Video.
Yesterday federal judge Denise L. Cote, of United States District Court in Manhattan, ruled against Apple in the United States vs. Apple Inc., et. al. ebook case. Anyone who thinks this isn’t a terrible outcome for publishers, authors, and readers, isn’t paying attention.
Bookish is a new online bookstore and discovery service. It is a joint venture of three publishers and presents a useful model for what scholarly publishers could do in building their own online bookstore.
A new publishing ecosystem is emerging that includes among its participants O’Reilly Media, Pearson, Safari Books, Barnes & Noble, Microsoft, and Liberty Media. This new ecosystem may come to challenge the proprietary ebook networks of Amazon and Apple.
Is the Internet simply an irresistible “outside context” event for traditional book publishers? Two interesting articles make it clear that it may be, if wielded aggressively. The “outside context problem” was described in Iain M. Bank’s book “Excession,” in which […]
The text of a presentation delivered at the recent NFAIS national conference, covering various scenarios for the future of publishing. The argument is that these future scenarios are already evident in the world of the present day, though in embryonic form, and that by studying the “embryos,” we can make reasonable predictions as to where things are headed.
PDA programs set up a kind of bookstore within library OPACs. It is possible to expand the range of these programs to enable the purchase of books by individuals on their own account–a new service for patrons and an income stream for libraries and publishers alike.
There are compelling reasons to create an online bookstore specializing in academic titles. Such a bookstore could be linked to physical community spaces and may even have a life as a component of library catalogs.
Barnes & Noble can compete more effectively with Amazon by moving to a strategy of making its infrastructure available to numerous companies, many of which formerly saw B&N as a rival.
The collapse of Borders should be a wake-up call to publishers that assume that the core infrastructure of their legacy businesses will always be there to provide essential services.
The Google Books Settlement actually hit its second roadblock this week. Here’s why, and where matter might go from here.