2024-04-08 06:02
The storm clouds surrounding artificial intelligence, both as a technology and as an industry, continue to darken, and I can now imagine a scenario where the AI industry implodes. What the i… Read More
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The Future of Publishing blog addresses issues, trends, data and events that impact the publishing industry.
2024-03-23 21:15
Despite widespread AI use, few publishers have publicly defined their AI policies. The extent of the problem loomed in my lunch conversation today with publishing industry veteran William Gu… Read More
2023-09-24 23:18
I just checked my calendar: it was Friday, April 28 when Peter Brantley and I met for lunch at the quirky Café Macaroni in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. I had only m… Read More
2023-07-26 19:45
There’s an article in The Economist this week titled “Your Employer is (Probably) Unprepared for Artificial Intelligence.” Yes, that sounds like it could be about publishin… Read More
2023-06-10 05:46
Last Monday Publishers Weekly issued my article “A Manifesto, of Sorts” about AI and book publishing (titled “AI Is About to Turn Book Publishing Upside-Down” in the… Read More
2023-05-27 07:30
I’m stealing this title from someone else’s newsletter deliberately — there’s no need to try to improve on it. Best of all, it gives me a chance to alert my readers t… Read More
2023-03-20 07:03
Like just about everyone in the world who can read and write, and who likes to look at pretty pictures, I’ve been captivated by the developments in artificial intelligence, LLMs, DALL… Read More
2022-10-28 22:00
The new PageBreak 2022 Conference launched in San Francisco Wednesday night with a reception at the Internet Archive and a delightful tour of the facility by the amazing Brewster Kahle. Here… Read More
2022-10-16 23:32
My news story about Book.io has just been published in Publishers Weekly (PW), in the weekly print edition and online. It was prompted by the news that Ingram has made an investment in the c… Read More
2022-01-18 02:45
Last October I wrote an article for Publishers Weekly, “AI Comes to Audiobooks.” With the growth of audiobooks continuing at scale, it’s not surprising that some enterprisi… Read More
2021-10-03 19:17
This is a select guide to books about book publishing, the catalog of someone who loves publishing and is on a never-ending quest to better understand how it works.
The post The 25: The Best… Read More
2021-05-24 06:42
This blog post is a love song to backlist books. Confined to the shadows beneath the bright light of publisher frontlists, these books are too often neglected. But there are many gems on the… Read More
2021-04-29 05:59
Three different items “crossed my desk” this week that made me think more about the role of technology in the future of book publishing. They’re from different sources, but… Read More
2021-01-05 08:05
When COVID-19 hit in early 2020, the press coverage was overwhelming. The trusted book publishing media, including Publishers Weekly, Publishing Perspectives, Publishers Lunch, The Bookselle… Read More
2020-09-23 07:08
In last Sunday’s New York Times there’s a wide-ranging profile of Madeline McIntosh, chief executive at Penguin Random House, the largest trade publisher in the U.S. The article… Read More
2020-06-01 07:29
The most vexing challenge in digital marketing for publishing is, without question, developing a strategy for Google search; how to be discovered on Google. It’s quite different from a… Read More
2020-03-30 07:17
For my new column in Publishers Weekly I’ve tried to reimagine metadata as a game. Not quite a board game; maybe a parlor game. When it comes to book publishing, metadata is a game of… Read More
2020-03-23 10:24
There’s a lot of coverage of the challenges facing book retail right now because of the coronavirus. The situation is shocking and sad. But it feels inappropriate to forget that even i… Read More
2019-08-19 20:06
Last week the U.S. Census Bureau reported that U.S. bookstore sales dropped 5.1% in the first six months of 2019. I filed the report away — as I always do with industry sales repo… Read More
2019-05-16 03:00
Everybody knows Kickstarter. Not everyone knows that Kickstarter is a major player in publishing, both for book-like objects and for journalism. In its 10 years of existence 46,000+ boo… Read More
2019-04-03 06:19
In this third post of a three-part series, I’ll focus directly on the book publishing industry and how the next recession could be felt. I hope that an analysis of the impact of past r… Read More
2019-01-29 06:41
There’s a challenge in assessing the impact of economic events on the publishing and entertainment industries over the last several decades. On the one hand these are largely hits-driv… Read More
2018-12-17 06:11
The upside of predicting a downturn in the economy is that eventually you’ll be right. The downside is that while the party’s still in full swing you’re just the grouchy gu… Read More
2018-09-06 06:47
Oh, bitcoin… bitcoin No peace I find Just an old sweet song Keeps blockchain on my mind It’s the hottest topic in publishing today, as hot as artificial intelligence was at this… Read More
2018-06-09 08:52
In the Cathedral Not quite invisible, the slow-time-gathering dust falls upon the choir, where stalls sing silently during the sermon. It tells of a Saviour who came to save this world so to… Read More
2018-05-31 07:26
Only a wealthy man could lament, as Len Riggio did yesterday that “the average paperback costs two and a half times the minimum wage. When I started,” he said “it was… Read More
2018-04-03 07:15
There’s little point in adding my voice to the chorus of the last few weeks, and months, and years, decrying issues of control and privacy lost via social media and search engines. But… Read More
2018-02-07 01:06
There’s money to be made in dying industries, that’s for certain. Case in point, Cenveo Corporation. Last Friday, February 2nd, Cenveo filed for bankruptcy. As reported on B… Read More
2018-01-09 19:49
Over the holidays I received an inquiry from a journalist about book buying, was it more impulsive or planned. What’s the breakdown? Seemed like a simple enough question. From my studi… Read More
2017-09-12 05:25
Designed to help publishers market their books online, OptiQly is a brand new software-as-a-service (SAAS) platform for book publishers. Initially just for Amazon*, OptiQ… Read More
2017-07-11 15:00
I do fret about the future of publishing. For all kinds of reasons. We’ve seen what happened to newspapers. And then the same thing happened to magazines (more or less). The future of… Read More
2017-05-30 14:03
…with good luck, not with a solid strategy. So writes Sam Missingham in an astute article published yesterday, called “Print sales might be rallying, but don’t get co… Read More
2017-05-23 07:39
Self-publishing has an ill-deserved reputation for being easy. Sure, you can take a bad manuscript in a Microsoft Word file, skip editing, design your own cover, and upload the mess to Amazo… Read More
2017-03-30 22:58
A few weeks ago AuthorEarnings released their latest book industry report. As always, there’s a lot of important information to grapple with—this time, even the title takes some… Read More
2017-01-10 08:00
At the link below you can download my new report, An Authoritative Look at Book Publishing Startups In the United States. I’ve been collecting the data in the report for nearly 5… Read More
2016-12-23 05:17
I’ve become intrigued with the intersection of book publishing and machine learning, text mining, natural language processing and the like: technologies that get lumped under the rubri… Read More
2016-12-01 23:51
In my last post I looked at the new book, The Bestseller Code, by Jodie Archer & Matthew Jockers. As it turns out the book also captured the attention of a colleague, Cliff Guren, who ru… Read More
2016-09-21 08:00
The Bestseller Code is already the most talked about insider’s book on the writing and publishing industry. Who wouldn’t want to know if a computer can predict whether a man… Read More
2016-08-02 06:40
This post examines the latest quarterly financial reports from the big 5 book publishers and tries to draw some conclusions from the data. The big 5 are, of course, Hachette, HarperColl… Read More
2016-07-07 06:42
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone
— W. H. Auden, Funeral Blues, 1936
The big news about Barnes & Noble is that after t… Read More
2016-06-10 07:10
The latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that employment in the book publishing industry dropped by over a quarter (25.7%) since spring 2006 and nearly a thi… Read More
2016-04-27 08:23
© Barnes & Noble
Leonard Riggio, chairman of Barnes & Noble, is 75-years-old: no one can accuse him of leaving his job early. Barnes & Noble is today at a crossroads, i… Read More
2016-04-19 07:17
Netflix released its latest quarter earnings report today. In a Letter to Shareholders (PDF), Netflix CEO Reed Hastings described the competitive landscape the company faces. In doing so he… Read More
2016-03-02 07:31
Catching up on my industry reading I’m facing the large effort required to try to digest the latest Author Earnings report and then wading into the vast cesspool of vitriol i… Read More
2016-02-09 22:23
The other day I was in my local branch of the Vancouver Public Library. It’s a small branch within a community center. They do a good job of serving our neighborhood, of cour… Read More
2016-01-27 22:58
“Reading comprehension,” Wikipedia tells us “is the ability to read text, process it and understand its meaning” (emphasis mine). I remember in Grade 5 at St. Anselm… Read More
2016-01-18 19:39
It’s a great and timely idea: “Five-Minute Manifestos” for the future of the book business. Philip Jones, editor of the UK’s The Bookseller started the… Read More
2015-11-03 02:00
There are not many people who blog about metadata. There are fewer still who blog about metadata for books. (*Note 1, below.)
I do. It’s my vice. And like many vices it’s a sourc… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
You have to feel it was all a waste of time, this notion that somehow writing and publishing were being “reinvented” by new ideas and approaches and the startup companies behind… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
Everyone takes a shot at Amazon, and it’s not difficult to see why. Founder/CEO Jeff Bezos is blamed for just about every corporate crime imaginable, from pricing that destroys competi… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
Two years ago at the Tools of Change conference in New York I was on a panel called “Startups to Publishing Companies Ripe for Expansion: What Are Investors in the Publishing Sector Lo… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
I started floating the idea of “bookishess” last spring. It’s a simple concept. Ebooks and print books each have notable advantages and disadvantages (they are in fact comp… Read More
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