There is an unstated theory of the e-book, which assumes that a book consists only of its text and can be manipulated without regard to the nature and circumstances of its creation. This is only one theory of many, but it is now the prevailing one.
Amazon’s new local distribution technology allows academic institutions new levels of control.
While the recording industry generally gets a bad rap for managing the transition to online distribution, there is one niche that has flipped the model and uses old distribution techniques to sell music across multiple formats. That niche is indie rock and there are some lessons for publishers.
The recent announcement of the merger of Random House and Penguin prompts an essay on why publishers get big. Surprisingly, their own greed has little to do with it.
A recent incident involving Amazon and a Norwegian reader has highlighted the sad state of ebook distribution on many levels.
As e-books have become mainstream, the art of using free e-books to drive print sales is coming to an end. But there are next steps for those who wish to think ahead.
Nate Silver’s new book tackles many topics — Big Data, the problem with scientific statistics, chess, baseball, gambling — with style and substance. There’s a lot of signal here.
Value-based pricing of unique journal products may make sense from a revenue perspective, but not from a sustainability perspective. What are the options?
Publishers have lost ground in the public debate of the role of publishing in scholarly communications. A new strategy is needed, one that emphasizes preemption, cooptation, and innovation.
Joe Esposito, with his colleagues Kizer Walker and Terry Ehling, has been working on an analysis of patron-driven acquisitions (PDA) for the past year. Joe has been posting early drafts of sections of the report on this research on the Kitchen. The full report is now available and can be downloaded here.
AAP and Google have reached a confidential settlement over Google Books. But the larger Authors Guild case remains.
Purchasing a college textbook can be a very expensive proposition. Why are these textbooks so expensive? The reason lies in the very structure of the industry, where instructors make decisions they don’t have to pay for.
The Scholarly Kitchen can be a useful research tool for its contributors, as it enables the community to participate in certain kinds of questions. But group blogs don’t work for everyone.
While the effect of piracy on some book sales is still debatable, college textbooks lose sales when online file-sharing becomes prevalent. A recent examination of the situation in a market outside the U.S. provides a laboratory example.
After exploring why the library requires redefinition, this second part of a two-part post offers a new taxonomy for allocating library functions and roles.