The big disruption opportunity in book publishing
Apple says it has written $ 6.5 billion in royalty checks to iOS apps developers in the last few years. While my book had a section which shows the distribution of those checks is uneven, and this NY Times article in its series on the iEconomy confirms “A quarter of the respondents said they had made less [...]
Disintermediating the Publishers
Selling is hard work. In Sales 101 you need to learn that every customer objection is not a demand for a lower price, though that seems to be SOP for more companies these days. Sometimes a customer gripe is actually of the variety that says this doesn’t meet my needs. At that point what amount [...]
The Kindle and business books 2 steps forward, 1 backward
Shame on me for assuming my book would come out on the Kindle after the hardback. That’s so one book ago. Amazon (and B&N) show a March 27 hardcopy ship date, but they released the Kindle version February 28. Makes sense for the electronic version to come out earlier. So I downloaded a copy and [...]
Bottom of the Pyramid of Digital Media
If you read this blog regularly you should be used to my constant carping about the lack of imagination in the music industry due to which the price per song is stuck at about $1. While the music industry in the West and in Bollywood is doing its best ostrich imitation, in another product category [...]
Borders Books In Trouble Due to eBooks
There was a point when our family went to a Borders or other bookstore at least once a week and sometimes twice. We would invariably spend up to $100 a trip. No more, and it seems like others have curtailed their book-buying visits too. I just read that Borders has not been paying publishers in an [...]
The Kno is Not a Tablet. It’s a Workout Device
Seriously. At 5 and a half pounds it’s not exactly a lightweight tablet you would want to hold for hours. I have a very simple test for you: if you have an average 14”-15” laptop around, flip it open, hold it vertically, just like this: … and tell me how long you could comfortably hold [...]
Amazon has 70-80 percent of E-Book Market?
Great article by David Carnoy, and thanks to Techmeme for putting me on to it. That statistic, if true, is amazing for Amazon. Some of the other things said really rang true. For example, that despite the publishers (with Steve Jobs help) having run roughshod over Amazon to drive up e-book prices, customers are voting [...]
The Kindle as Illuminated Manuscript. The Read/Write eBook Arrives, not a moment too soon
Yay! I wrote a post a while ago – Reading is Writing: Illuminating The Digital Manuscript – that argued the role of annotation can be as important as primary content when it comes to reading, learning, and knowledge. Celebrate marginalia! I believe this is the future of digital publishing. Learn from open source. The idea [...]
iPad musings – How big is the market for this anyway?
Maybe I’m the only person who’s not doing handstands re: the new iPad. It’s a slick device but is the market really there for it? Here are some points to ponder….
Electronic textbooks FTW!
My new micro theory class uses a different textbook than does the one I just dropped. I was about to head over to Amazon to order the new one when I saw this notice on the course’s Blackboard page: Ebook program This class participates in a pilot scheme, sponsored by the publisher Wiley, for free [...]
