Sci-Hub sets a reprehensible example, but publishers cannot be content simply to stamp out such services. In order to evolve the industry into the future, publishers have to provide services that make Sci-Hub and its ilk seem old-fashioned and inconvenient to use.
Amazon is reportedly poised to get into the open educational resources game. This could be huge, and not just for the most obvious reasons.
Revisiting Joe Esposito’s classic post on how the governance of not-for-profit publishing entities plays a large role in those entities’ success or failure.
A recent article about the publishing industry confuses the various business segments and offers prescriptions that are largely irrelevant to the task of running a publishing enterprise.
There is much discussion now about creating new online bookstores, especially for academic publishers. Some of these discussions, however, are not aligned with overarching trends on the Internet and risk creating something that appears to be out of date the moment it is launched.
Rakuten, the owner of Kobo, has acquired OverDrive, a leading library ebook vendor. The implications of this deal will ripple through the industry and require many players to reevaluate their strategies.
Lack of information about how books are actually used has resulted in a set of actions that don’t make solid economic sense. Now that more end-user information is becoming available, the book business is likely to adjust its practices.
As user expectations on digital experiences change, flat-out “search” is no longer good enough. The up-and-coming users of digital content expect you to know what they want and when they want it, without having to ask for it. These thoughts and more from the recent NFAIS Conference are discussed here.
Last week, Amazon won an auction for the .book Top Level Domain on the internet, paying $10 million for the new real estate. Was it worth it? And should publishers be worried about what this means for them?
Announcing a research project to study how many academic books Amazon sells to libraries.
At the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, a pre-meeting session was held called CONTEC. This follow-up to the much beloved, but now defunct, O’Reilly Tools of Change conference brought together an interesting mix of leadership from traditional […]
Google recently disclosed that they give Web sites higher ranking if they are encrypted. This is but one example of how Google serves as a gatekeeper of the Internet, making cultural decisions in the name of technological elegance.
Could a Kindle Unlimited subscription replace your local library? What can scholarly publishers learn from Amazon’s tactics here?
There is no comprehensive solutions provider for academic book publishers today. The emergence of such a vendor could transform the academic book publishing world by inviting new entrants into the marketplace.
In order to build direct-to-consumer sales, university presses should consider streamlining their publishing programs and focus on a small number of subject areas, even just a single area.