future of publishing

OMG! What if B&N Closes?

“The report of my death was an exaggeration.” So said Mark Twain in 1897, and I’m wondering if Barnes & Noble might be saying the same thing right about now.   Over the last week, an article by Michael Levin has been making the rounds, causing fear and trembling among certain groups of authors and…
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Future

What Does the Future Hold?

I was talking with a friend who works in the financial industry, and a question came up about what we would each be doing 30 years from now. My friend was anticipating a prosperous retirement at that point, having built up a significant and valuable business. While the financial life of our nation has its…
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seth godin

Do Authors Have a Right to be Paid?

This controversial blog post by Matthew Ingram made quite a stir last week: Godin to authors: You have no right to make money any more After a quick look, I responded via Twitter: “For obvious reasons, this article kind of makes my blood boil.” It wasn’t until the weekend that I had some time to…
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iceberg

Are We Ready for Change?

What the Publishing Industry can Learn from Kodak Part 3 of 3 The last two days we’ve been looking at things publishers, agents, and writers can learn from the decline of the Kodak company. Monday we discussed knowing our business, and yesterday we looked at knowing our customer. Today let’s talk about dealing with change.…
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Kodak film

Do You Know Your Customer?

What Publishing Can Learn From Kodak Part 2 of 3 This week we’re looking at things the publishing industry can learn from the decline of Eastman Kodak Co. Yesterday we started with the importance of knowing our business. Today – three more lessons from Kodak. What insight can we gain about knowing our customer? 4. We…
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Kodak film

Do You Know What Business You’re In?

What the Publishing Industry Can Learn From Kodak Part 1 of 3 Last month one of America’s most venerable and recognizable companies, Eastman Kodak Co., filed for bankruptcy after a long, steady decline in revenue. I’ve been reading various business analysts’ explanations and deconstructions of what went wrong, and all I keep thinking is, holy…
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The Changing Publishing Landscape

Yesterday we talked about how slow everything seems to go in traditional publishing, and how it can be tempting to think of "quick" e-book publishing as better simply because it's faster. I have a couple of things to add today about how this industry is changing.
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