The Open Access Price Wars Have Begun
A new open access publishing service, Peerj, has been started by Peter Binfield, formerly the publisher of PLoS ONE. This augurs a price war among author-pays OA services.
Sizing the Market for Patron-driven Acquisitions (PDA)
Patron-driven acquisitions (PDA) has reached a market of approximately $20 million and is growing rapidly; it is likely to more than double over the next 18 months. University presses make up perhaps 25% of the total.
The Emergence of a New Platform: Ubiquitous Real-time Video
Real-time video is soon to be ubiquitous, creating a new platform for publishers to consider as they develop their new product plans.
Thinking Through a Strategy for Digital Rights Management
DRM (digital rights management) is a problematic response to a complex situation where copyright infringement becomes common. A management team needs a clear, progressive strategy to offset unauthorized use and may choose to drop DRM
Talking to the End-User — A Publishing Paradigm
Publishers can and should explore strategies that are built around users, which is a kind of D2C marketing. However, working on a direct basis has its costs and may make us all appreciate all the efficiencies that intermediaries provide.
"The Muppet Show" — It All Started With a Pitch
Selling an idea well takes a lot of skill and daring. How “The Muppet Show” was pitched reveals a lot about why it worked.
Amazon, PDA, and Library Sales for Books
Amazon’s sales to libraries and patron-driven acquisitions have many interesting marketplace parallels, but Amazon works only with print for libraries, whereas PDA is mostly digital. This could lead Amazon to enter the PDA market through acquisition.
Can He Fix it? CrossRef Launches 'Toon to Inspire Young Publishers
Will a new cartoon designed to lure children into digital publishing work? Yes, it can.
The Portal Problem, Part 1: The Plight of the Britannica
Did the Encyclopedia Britannica stop printing because of the limitations of print? Or is there something more pernicious at the roots of Britannica’s problems?
Predicting the Present
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.
The Preemptive Publisher
In a business environment characterized by risks, upstart innovations, and even contempt for the law, publishers have to ward off threats the old-fashioned way, by out-innovating their rivals and preempting new services.
A Little Library Can Make a Big Difference — With Your Help
A little library has big plans, and you can help.
The Bookstore in the Library
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.
Hawking Radiation: Figuring Out How Many Books Are Sold to Libraries
An odd circumstance of the book business is that no one really knows which books are sold to libraries and how important libraries are to overall book sales. At the heart of the problem is the fact that Amazon, which sells books to libraries, does not share any sales data. This post suggests a couple ways to get at that data in the face of Amazon’s obstinacy.
The Bookstore of Last Resort
When on-demand systems for bookselling, such as patron-driven acquisitions, are set up, they create an unexpected problem: How do you know the book will still be available when you finally get around to ordering it? The bookstore of last resort is a preservation-based commercial venture to ensure that books are always available.