A Single User Account

Academics’ expectations for user experience are set not by reference to improvements relative to the past but increasingly in comparison with their experiences on consumer internet services and mobile devices. The best solution for research, teaching, and learning would be a single account for each user, controlled by that individual, and accepted portably across services and platforms.

An Archaeology of Discovery

How valuable is the brand? It depends on the ecosystem or publishing epoch. Brands were the hallmark of the print era, but with the advent of new publishing paradigms, brands now compete with other useful means to identify materials.

The Ubiquitous Bookstore

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however, are not aligned with overarching trends on the Internet and risk creating something that appears to be out of date the moment it is launched.

Tweaking Twitter

Social media giant (and information tool) Twitter has casually suggested to its users that it might be changing its algorithm. But has it considered what the implications for users might be? The users have and they are worried.

Build a Better Mousetrap

The best way to increase D2C sales is to work in increasing the traffic to your site. Without traffic, there can be few sales. Unfortunately, the university press community has paid little attention to building Web traffic.

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.