By Todd Sattersten In the March 4th, 2010 issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen wrote an op-ed about his views on the then-active debate over health care. The essay was written from his unique vantage point having studied companies and industries faced with the challenges of innovation. Christensen has authored or co-authored five books and countless …
E-books are a Cul-de-sac: Why Publishing Needs to Rethink Its Digital Strategy
By Eoin Purcell DUBLIN: It is a mark of the publishing industry’s poor strategic abilities that e-books have become an all consuming obsession. I believe that, ultimately, e-books are merely a cul-de-sac. Given that sales of e-books tripled in 2009 — and continue to boom — this may seem ever so slightly irrational, but hear me out. Much as we …
Report from the Virginia Festival of the Book
By Erin L. Cox This weekend, I’ve traveled down to Charlottesville, Virginia for their annual literary festival, The Virginia Festival of the Book. It seems only natural for Charlottesville to host a literary festival since it was the home to many great writers, including Edgar Allan Poe and William Faulkner. I am here to speak on a panel called “Agents …
A Year Without Work and I’ve Never Felt Better
By Erin L. Cox Yesterday, Larry Hughes, former HarperCollins USA publicist, published a post on his blog “Book Flack at Large” looking back at his year without work. While he does lament not having a “day job” that he loves, his list of personal achievements seems extraordinary and something of which to be quite proud. Next week marks my own one-year …
Best of ’09: Andy Hunter on Independent Publishing
As 2009 comes to a close we wanted to celebrate by bringing you a week’s worth of your favorite articles that we’ve run on Publishing Perspectives. We’ll be back on Monday, January 4, with our next new feature. In the meantime, enjoy the best of ’09 and check our news blog for updates and analysis. Today, Andy Hunter, editor-in-chief of …
Is B2B the Real Market for E-books?
By Dev Ganesan FALLS CHURCH, VA: You might not realize it yet, but there’s an unexpected change occurring in the digital publishing space. We can’t help but notice it ourselves—many of our new clients aren’t who you’d suspect. In fact, they aren’t even publishers, in the traditional sense. They are business-to-business (B2B) corporations of all sorts, and they’re asking us to …
STM Publishers Face Some Old, Some New Challenges, Especially the Bugaboo of “Free”
By Richard Lampert At first glance, STM publishing (Scientific Technical Medical publishing) resembles most other segments of the book publishing industry. It’s still dominated by commercial publishing companies plus a few scholarly houses, and new titles still appear at regular intervals supported by marketing to the book trade, individuals, and institutions. And the familiar challenges are there as well — …
If New Media is a Giant Killer, Will Independent Publishing Get the Golden Eggs?
Editorial by Andy Hunter In these stormy times, large publishers are jettisoning everything they can in order to lighten their sinking ships. What are they tossing overboard? Among other things, promising authors who haven’t found an audience, as well as anything too literary, difficult, or narrow in appeal. As Random House clings to the desperately inflated Dan Brown, hoping a …
Digital Distribution Means Global, Not Local
By Andrew Savikas, vice-president, O’Reilly Media Within a few years (or sooner) more people will read the books we publish at O’Reilly Media in digital form than in print. While it won’t happen that quickly for other publishers, it will happen. That doesn’t mean that print books will go away — it just means that publishing will be about digital …
Hyperbolic Heidelberg Appeal Distracts from Real Issues in Germany’s Literary Future
Editorial by Rüdiger Wischenbart Is the glass half empty or half full? At the moment, German publishing circles are absorbed in a very public debate over the digital future, one that threatens to split the literary establishment from the younger generation of “digerati” and “digital natives.” The debate was prompted in March after literature professor Roland Reuss (at left) published …