Hiding in Plain Sight — Is the Subscription Model the Optimal Business Model for the Digital Age?
The half-forgotten subscription model deserves our praise and renewed attention. In the Digital Age, it has become more popular than ever.
What is an eBook? How do Publishers price it?
A short video explaining the costs that go into producing a book, and how little difference there is in those costs between electronic and print books.
Doing and Undoing the Homework
Jill Lepore’s dismissal of Clayton Christensen misses the point. Disruptive technology and Christensen’s method of identifying it are very real elements of the marketplace, though the truth of this is often obscured by some of the silly advocates of disruption.
What Societies Really Think About Open Access
What do societies really think about Open Access? A recent survey, though small, provides some initial answers…
Hit the Road — How a Forgettable Paper and a Misguided Publisher Created an Unnecessary Controversy
The censorship scandal at Taylor & Francis has wrapped up, and the lessons are as obvious as you think.
How Important Are Library Sales to the University Press? One Case Study
A study of sales data for 2012 imprints from the University of Chicago Press offers tantalizing hints about the importance (or lack thereof) of library sales to university presses — particularly with regard to scholarly monographs.
The Daily Show: Glass Half Empty
The Daily Show goes after the “glassholes”.
This Just In from the 1990s — We’re Doomed, Doomed, Doomed, Sayeth the Editor of VentureBeat
A Silicon Valley journalist has seen open access and deemed it disruptive. He’s 15+ years and scads of evidence behind the times, as we enter the post-disruption era.
Stick to Your Ribs: Back to School: Rethinking the Textbook
Revisiting Joe Esposito’s 2011 post on the challenges and the strategies for moving textbooks into the digital era.
Well, That About Wraps it up for Clayton Christensen
Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation is critically examined by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker. If he is wrong, why is the idea of disruption such a compelling one?
How Ink is Made: A Beautiful Reflection of the Analog World we still inhabit
A YouTube Video, How Ink is Made, reminds us of the art and craft that goes into creating the physical products that remain a significant fixture of the publishing world.
Contemplating a Chart — How the Home Page Dominates Thinking . . . and Little Else
A quick analysis of data based on an insight from the New York Times’ “Innovation” Report suggests that the home page dominates thinking far too much, leading to blind spots about what really deserves our design attention.
Gone Fishing: Back in a Week
It’s been a crazy busy Spring for all at The Scholarly Kitchen and we’re taking a much needed week off.
Stick to Your Ribs: Breaking the Silence Around Premature Quantification
Revisiting Joe Esposito’s 2010 post which discussed how improper use of financial analysis can obscure problems in strategy, a problem faced by for-profit and not-for-profit organizations alike.
Life in a Bubble — The Limitations of Public Access, the Challenges of Public Engagement
Presumptions about the benefits of access fail to take into account the power and difficulty of true engagement with diverse publics.