Stick to Your Ribs: The Editorial Fallacy
Revisiting a popular and important post — the editorial fallacy, that belief that more or better manuscripts can save you from disruptive change.
A New Form of Filter Failure — The Invisible Dangers of the Online "Filter Bubble"
The downside of silent filters becomes crystal clear in this important talk.
The Demand for Convenience — Attention Scarcity Reverses the Equations of Publishing
Convenience is a major driver of content usage. But what other changes are afoot that feed into this amorphous concept of “convenience”?
John Palfrey: Thoughts About the Future of Libraries and Learning
John Palfrey talks about digital scholarship, digital students, and the challenges and opportunities both provide. From the closing plenary of the SSP Annual Meeting.
What’s for Sale? Moving from Selling Content to Monetizing Attention
At some point book publishers will begin to copy the Netflix model of selling by subscription. This changes the nature of the business from one where products are sold to one where publishers attempt to monetize readers’ attention.
Mobile Reading REALLY Comes of Age — An Information-packed Slide Deck Worth Viewing
The facts and context for e-reading show strong trends of demand and expectations.
Is Piracy Really the F**king Answer?
A viral book sensation’s obvious story may not be as obvious as some think, harder to replicate, and indicative of a strong counter-trend.
"The Making of a Scholarly Journal" Video — Perhaps Inducing More Nostalgia Than Intended
A nice video documenting how a humanities journal is made inadvertently hits on some other themes, almost by exclusion.
Mourning the Printed Book — The Aesthetic and Sensory Deprivation of E-books
Nostalgia about the book will be upon us soon enough. But we’ve been down similar paths before, and so have prior generations.
"Beyond Bin Laden" — A Hint at a New Way Forward for Long-form Journalism
A new “instabook” about Bin Laden hit the Kindle store about a week after the events. What might this mean for that space between books and magazines?
Stick to Your Ribs: Can the Creativity of Social Persuasion Cure "Corporate Asperger's Syndrome"?
This week, we revisit the power of persuasion, and wonder out loud if perhaps publishers suffer from traits that hold back engagement.
The Making of a Magazine — The Movie
How Business Week is made, via a short video montage.
Digital Texts in Education — E-Readers Still Have Limitations, But the Path Forward Is Clearer
While e-readers continue to fail crucial tests for academic utility, the alternative hints at more robust devices, not a return to print.
"Page One" — The New York Times Documentary Is Coming
They’ve made a movie about a newspaper’s travails in the Internet age.
Stick to Your Ribs — Why Publishers' Brands Matter
(Editor’s Note: Published just over a year ago, this post helped people from outside publishing houses understand some fundamentals of brand management and quality proxies. It’s as clearly written as anything you’ll ever see, and a gem from the archive.) […]