Friday, March 28, 2008

Digital Demand Games

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The news today that was widely covered and reported in the Wall Street Journal is that Amazon has announced that it will only sell print-on-...
Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Hear Hear!

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We read in today’s Bookseller ‘Mobile Deal for Random’ of the new audiobook download service from www.gospoken.com for Random House titles. ...
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Write to Earn

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We must always remember that there are only two players that count, the author who creates the work and the reader who pays for it. All the ...

Double Agents?

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This last couple of weeks has shown us how easy it is to forget or pay token gestures to authors. Nobody would be as bold as to stand and sa...
Thursday, March 20, 2008

200,000 Read Mieko's Blog

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Mieko Kawakami, has just been heralded as Japan’s biggest literary star. Her fame has not been created between the jackets but on the Intern...
Wednesday, March 19, 2008

So if the World Goes Broadband What Does it Mean?

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Broadband subscriptions in eight European countries are now above the levels in the United States and Japan. The EU stated this week that th...

News or Noise?

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We were once amazed how many Bollywood films were produced each year. You can watch two different films every day and still would not see th...
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

A New Role for Agents?

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The Bookseller reports today on the role of the agent. In a serious twist today they report that the agency PFD is entering a print on deman...
Monday, March 17, 2008

Discovering New eBook Players

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Sometimes its fun to unearth news and sometimes its hard work. Today those smart industry watches at Publishers Lunch made what could have b...

Music is Heading South by Southwest

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The music business is a weird world and the question of who makes the money going forward has long featured in this blog. As George Martin p...
Friday, March 14, 2008

A Lesson in Social Skills

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AOL is buying BeBo the number three social networking site as they start to reposition their offer and see obvious need for a social network...

London Word Festival Opens Digital Doors

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Yesterday we spoke at the London Word Festival at the Bishopsgate Institute. The event was titled The Creative Word: Book Futures: Reading, ...

UK Trade's Ditital First Steps

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The Bookseller in its feed today has let the secret out. They report on the news that the ebook programme has now unofficially landed and be...

Digitising Classics

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It’s strange to see the classics now being rebranded with new livery and even re written into today’s prose in the physical book world. A fe...
Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Digital Climate Change

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We applaud the speech that Random House chair and c.e.o. Gail Rebuck gave this week. The speech itself was fully reported in today’s Booksel...
Friday, March 07, 2008

Mobile News

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Many believe as we do that the mobile platform will dominate the digital world along with the ‘heavier’ Laptop and that everything else, inc...
Thursday, March 06, 2008

A Lesson in Digital Creative Writing

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We are now speaking to a number of authors and content creators about the digital opportunities and challenges that they now face. We are lo...
Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Its Official Audiobook DRM is Dead

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Following hot on the heels of Random House’s announcement that they were to sell audiobook downloads DRM free now comes the news that Pengui...
Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Predicting the Online Change

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‘Driven by growing popularity of online shopping, lure of discounts offered by retailers, faster delivery, free shipments, and the convenien...
Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Blogsquare

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In response to a Blog on Booksquare re Blogs http://www.booksquare.com/blogging-in-the-21st-century/ ,we wrote The format has always dictate...
Monday, February 25, 2008

Audiobook DRM RIP

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The story of the month must go to the news that Random House are to allow audiobook downloads to be sold online as downloads free of DRM. We...
Thursday, February 21, 2008

Video Killed the .....

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As video increases to draw attention, then so does the means of its delivery on the net. Bluray may have won a war over HD DVD, but another ...
Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Product Placement or Product Search?

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We have all seen the subtle but sometimes obvious product placements on TV and in films. These can earn significant exposure for a brand and...

My Space, My Music, My Book?

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Could MySpace with its captive audience extend to capture the music download market? The online social networking site owned by News Corp, ...

Reed Reshapes

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It is always good to watch the major publishers such as Thomson, Reed Elsevier, etc. They focus on markets and move decisively in them and d...

Large OLED screens coming

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We have written previously about the development of the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen technology to make medium to large panels...

'DreamSpark' Captures Them Young

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Bill Gates will launch Microsoft’s new "DreamSpark" initiative during his tour of U.S. and Canadian colleges that starts next week...
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Marrying Content to Platform

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We read this week of Dorling Kindersley’s agreement with media content company Mobifusion to globally deliver branded mobile content to cons...

iPhones go Talkies

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Imagine you sold 3.7 million units but could only had 2.3 million registered to use the closed service you had created. How do you loose 1.4...

HD DVD RIP

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Todate, about one million Blu-ray players have been sold with another three million integrated into Sony’s PlayStation 3 consoles. Interest...

Who Pays the NewsPiper?

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We read today of the demise of the Nielson booktrade web site The Book Standard. There are certainly many wishing to compete within this cro...
Monday, February 18, 2008

Women and Money, Makes Sense

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Last week we wrote about the Oprah touch and her 48 hour offer to download Suze Orman’s book ‘Women and Money’ for free. According to report...
Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Oprah kicks starts Digital

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We raise our hats to Nicholas Clee in the Guardian for spelling out succinctly what we have been trying to say here. It’s a pity he isn’t st...

Open Access opt out at Harvard

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The Journal model has defied all that have striven to destroy it. It creates value by creating authority and reference and its that refrence...
Monday, February 11, 2008

Read by Digital Chapters

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We read today of a move we long expected to make a return – digital chapters. Remember ‘Riding the bullet’ by Stephen King which he released...

Re-Jacketing Content

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We read today that HarperCollins is yet again at the digital front and pushing back the boundaries. It is now extending some of its ‘browse ...
Saturday, February 09, 2008

Beware of Gorillas

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When faced with a Gorilla you have a limited number of choices. You can turnaround and walk away and pretend he wasn’t there. You can smile ...
Thursday, February 07, 2008

Digital Climate Change is Coming

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We warmly welcome the BML market research 'Books and bookshops at the dawning of the digital age'. We strongly advocated such resear...

The Consolidation of Intellectual Property

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Content is clearly becoming media neutral and king of many converging sectors. This broadens the opportunity to exploit the intellectual pro...
Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Money Matters

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The naive among us presume when you go to a conference and you pay an entrance ticket you will get independent viewpoints and insights and a...
Friday, February 01, 2008

Microsoft Wants to Buy Yahoo

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The omnivore wars have taken a different twist with Microsoft tabling a $44.6 billion cash and share bid to buy Yahoo. The bid if successful...

eRomance Fiction

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A century of publishing should be cerebrated and whatever anyone thinks about the content of Mills & Boon’s books they have had a very s...
Thursday, January 31, 2008

Amazon Acquire the Audio-book Market?

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Today we read about the biggest digital news to hit the news for many months. Surprisingly it wasn’t top to the industry news but its implic...
Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Prepare for the Future Today

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We read today about the potential future of mobiles from two different and diverse sources our good friend and futurist Ray Hammond and the ...