All Episodes
Happy Days For Debut Novelist
In 2014, some things about the book business are as long gone as the days of Mad Men. Three-martini lunches, of course, as well an urban landscape dotted with bookstores. Also among the missing, or so we thought, were the hefty advances that signal the imminent...
Scholarly Societies And Creative Commons Licenses
Do you know your CC-BY from your CC-BY-NC-ND? As funders roll out mandates globally for Open Access archiving of public research, scholarly societies have a responsibility to understand the OA licensing options mean. No two licenses are the same. The one you choose...
The Song of Transparency
As it enables greater access to information, technology sheds light in corners of the media industry long obscured by fog and shadow. In Washington last week, at the 14th annual Future of Music Policy Summit, musicians and music industry executives shared a stage with...
Publishers In No Hurry For Amazon Antitrust
Over the summer, as Amazon and Hachette clashed on e-book pricing levels, calls were heard for the federal government to undertake antitrust action against the e-retailing giant. Distraught booksellers and outraged intellectuals alike have challenged the Department of...
Innovations in Global Rights Licensing
As traditional sales channels have declined in the digital era, publishers and other content providers have moved to market and distribute their work in innovative and flexible ways. Success in this new environment relies on automated licensing tools that support...
Recycle, Remix, Resell
From the title, you might think we attended an environmental conference for a session looking at waste management as a strategy to drive incremental profitability. Instead, the program was a part of CONTEC 2014, held just before the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair....
The Amazon Problem
Linus van Pelt, the resident intellectual of the Peanuts comic strip, once articulated his philosophy of life as, “No problem is so big or so complicated that it can’t be run away from.” For many years, one could argue, such was the view of book publishers when it...
Fall & Frankfurt Mean Global E-Book Report Update
National e-book markets are like snowflakes. No two are alike. Emerging markets particularly engage in approaches of their own. In India, domestic platforms lead the way; while in Brazil, Apple shows a surprising lead in eBook distribution over the usual suspect....
Library Free For All?
“Built by the People and Dedicated to the Advancement of Learning.” So reads an inscription on the Boston Public Library façade that summarizes the aspirations of the American public library. The 19th-century BPL is as nearly a palatial edifice as any in Boston, yet...
Open Access: Who Holds the Power?
Frankfurt is the birthplace of book fairs, and of sturm und drang – or at least, it is the birthplace of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born in Frankfurt in 1749. Goethe embodied German Romanticism, which enobled sturm und drang – storm and stress – as the iron-hard...
Frankfurt Book Fair Same But Different
Reliably as ever, the Frankfurt Book Fair for 2014 is overstuffed with new titles from promising and established authors alike. Yet the hopeful, even sometimes buoyant mood belies a fear of the figure lurking around every corner of the business, no matter where you...
Authors As Team Players
There may be no “I” in team, and usually, there isn’t an author either. Authors have long prized their authority, enjoying total control not only over their writings, but also control over the reader’s experience. Novelists and others who have made the trip to...