What Is the "News" Associated with Journal Publication?
The news function of journals has many dimensions, a major one consisting of where and when an article is published.
Why Do Publishers Want to Sell Direct?
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?
This Is a Generic Brand Video, Now With Video
The perfect brand video comes to life.
Does Creative Commons Make Sense?
Axiomatically more complicated than copyright, built to provide no legal cover, and possibly put in place by the technocrats in Silicon Valley, does Creative Commons make sense for the creative class?
A Survey of University Presses
A survey of university presses on selling books directly from their Web sites shows that for most presses, sales hover around 1% of total volume, but a concerted effort to improve Web marketing could increase that figure to 3% or perhaps even more.
SXSW Interactive: The Annual Pilgrimage
SXSW Interactive is over, but the impact is not. Why SXSW continues to be relevant to business and publishing.
Everybody Wants a Netflix for Books
There will never be a “Netflix for books” if by that term one means a comprehensive collection. Book aggregations must serve the overarching needs of the publisher to generate revenue and are thus best viewed as simply one channel among many.
This One Doesn’t Scale — One Big Reason Why Online Advertising Is Comparatively Limited
Online advertising fails to match print advertising in its scalability, slowing the transition to online for major journals and capping the potential for online subscription prices to be offset in a manner similar to print’s legacy business.
Privacy and the University Press
As university presses become more involved with D2C marketing, they are going to confront the need for clearly articulated privacy policies. The time to put those policies in place is now.
Marketing in the Stream
Social media presents a new set of marketing opportunities for publishers, the most important of which is a new paradigm for thinking about the world of digital media, which now is the world of the social stream instead of the world of cyberspace.
When Professional Society Publishers Take an Independent Path
The Journal of Cultural Anthropology is now becoming open access. This points to one path a professional society can follow if it cannot derive significant income from library sales or if its membership is more interested in wider dissemination of material than the uses income from journals can be put to.
Can Mega-journals Maintain Boundaries When They and Their Customers Align on "Publish or Perish"?
The “publish or perish” culture has created a major mega-journal. But are its boundaries and standards built properly to avoid becoming an enabler of that culture?
Who Can Rival Amazon?
Amazon is now the most important participant in the business of scholarly books, but it faces few threats. This post hypothesizes about where challenges to Amazon could come from.
Publishing Viewed from Santa's Crystal Ball
Some predictions about the future of scholarly publishing, which acknowledges the continuing central role of the major STM publishers.
Vaccines and Autism — Despite a Widely Publicized Scientific Hoax, Celebrity Continues to Dominate the Evidence
The vaccine-autism papers were a hoax. But a lingering controversy around the diagnosis of a celebrity’s child and her insistence on preserving her version of the facts only shows how stubborn misinformation can be.