Pitching and selling book projects to editors over lunch in Manhattan dining clubs. If that’s your picture of a literary agent’s life, it’s time for a make-over. A radical make-over, in fact. Literary agents have long occupied a place on the edge of publishing;...
Live and learn. In 2009, book business representatives took their show on the road to Austin and were met with a hail of digital brickbats. Four years on, the techies and the booksters have found common ground at the upcoming SXSW Interactive Festival. “In 2009, the...
Imagine your computer is designed to disobey you – even worse, to hide things from you. Arthur C. Clarke imagined such a computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The HAL 9000 “super computer” famously sabotages a deep space mission when it turns on the human crew. As one...
Across the publishing industry, all the players are proudly declaring independence. Authors have cut ties with publishers and agents and found success in more than “50 shades.” Determined to survive in their brick-and-mortar forms, “indie” booksellers are fighting for...
Courtrooms, like football fields, are stages for transformation. At times, opposing sides clash over principle. Otherwise, they fight for profit. There are good guys, and there are bad guys, umpires, and cheerleaders. At the conclusion of such contests, we hardly...
In a famous case, Sherlock Holmes seemed to meet his demise. Yet the character survives, and for a detective 126 years old, he manages rather well to this day in part because of an apparent quirk in copyright law. One scholar, though, wants to put an end to Holmes as...
In short order and forever, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites have changed the ways that individuals seek and find information about products, people, and organizations. Creating a Facebook or Twitter account is only the start, of course. Real change...
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission declined to take up antitrust charges against Google. The decision disappointed not only Google’s competitors, who charge the Internet search giant with monopolistic practices, but also consumer advocates who say that its...
At the Tools of Change conference for 2013, to paraphrase William Gibson, the future is already here – and it was pretty evenly distributed among the many panels and workshops. Publishers and their technology vendors were focused this week on conversion and...
Across all types of media, the onslaught of digital disruption typically prompts a defensive reaction. Publishers struggle to maintain their legacy business models, even as they must build out new models that are sustainable and scalable. The digital challenge is...
