It’s true. After six years, three months and twelve days, I’m passing on the torch at BookNet Canada. It is bittersweet. I am leaving a group of people who are gifted, committed and tremendously capable. But I leave with complete faith that BookNet will continue to deliver on its mandate to drive innovation and smooth out the rough patches of the book industry supply chain.
New Publishing Business Model #1: Symtext
Reaching Readers: Thoughts from BookCamp TO
BookCamp TO: Moving to The How
Bookcamp: An Unreview
So it is inevitable that when you are involved in an unconference that it is impossible to adequately provide a synopsis of what was covered. There are too many threads, not to mention dead-ends that many of the conversations can take. But there was an enviable comraderie where everyone present felt invested in solving the problems at hand in the publishing industry. And maybe classifying them as problems is unfair when really what they are is something the human race is pretty good at solving—challenges.
The Bearable Inanity of Twitter: Why It's Still Very Much Worth It
As a Twitter user, a common comment I hear from non-users, or those who have dabbled but can’t commit, is a variation along “what’s the point of hearing inane babble from strangers? if I want that, I’ll ride the TTC/hang out in coffee shops near loud talkers/stand at a street corner like an absent minded busker without a music maker”.
It’s a point that isn’t quick or easy to counter but given my general stubbornness and willingness to argue (cajun-style), it’s one that I’ve been pondering for quite some time.
979 ISBNs Spotted in the Wilds of France!
We’ve been beating the 979 drum for a while, but it’s finally here. And they aren’t being issued somewhere out-of-the-way like Burkina Faso, but in EU/decadent West/producing-tons-of-books *France*! And that means anyone with French books passing through their supply chains has finally reached their day of identifier reckoning.
ISBN Missing You for So Long
Just saying ‘ISBN’ creates an instant bond with any fellow book trade devotees in the vicinity. Whether you favour the spell out (i.s.B.n., generally with an element of slur) or the phonetic slide (IsBin), publishers, booksellers and librarians alike perk up their ears at the mention of this secret password, this shared standard, this format filer.
When does a helping hand, like the ISBN has been for the printed book, become a major pain in the behind?
Google to Sell E-Books Directly in 2009
The Google gauntlet has been thrown. Yesterday’s New York Times article offers more detail on Google’s BEA announcement of plans (Tom Turvey: “This time we mean it”) to sell e-books directly by the end of 2009.
Let’s stroll away from top-level cost/benefit analysis (book customers—good!, Amazon—bad!, e-readers/eRetailers—bad?, publishers—bad/good/goodbad?) for now and talk about what this shift means for the market as a whole.
It Takes a Village to Create an O'Reilly Book
O’Reilly Media is no stranger to reader collaboration. Their first open-source initiative, Rough Cuts allowed books-in-progress to be purchased, read and commented on while still in process of being written, thus enriching the work and creating a community of dedicated readers.
Open Feedback Publishing System (OFPS), the new O’Reilly experiment, takes things a step further…
