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.
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.
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.
HighWire Press Moves Out of Stanford and Becomes an Equity-funded "Inc."
On Friday, Highwire Press announced that it has received a “significant equity investment to support its strategic growth from Accel-KKR” and that it would be spinning off from the Stanford University Library, which has been its home for nearly 20 years. This post explores the implications of the transition.
Regret Salad with Aspiration Dressing — A Scholarly Publisher Delves Into the New York Times’ Innovation Report
The New York Times’ “Innovation” Report will hit a lot of nerves when it comes to strategy, long-term transformation, investment, digital operations, silos, print legacy, and organizational culture. And it will remind you how barely contained panic looks to others.
Identity Theft of the Scholarly Kind
Building a reputation can take decades for a society, publisher or journal. Unfortunately, the influential “seals of approval” in the industry are easy to spoof leaving some authors confused and deceived.
Identity Crisis — Does Print Need to Die for Online to Flourish?
The bias against printing has a technological basis and some business rationale, but are we underserving our role as “content marketers” by shutting down this option out of hand?
University Presses: "Under Fire" or Just Under the Gun (Like the Rest of Us)?
Are university presses really “under fire,” or are they simply experiencing the natural consequences of doing the wrong things at the wrong time in a marketplace that has evolved away from them?