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An aspect of the Amazon-Apple battle the tech world doesn’t care much about
Almost two years ago, I wrote a post which continues to be one of the most-read in the history of this blog, the point of which was that the business model disruption (called “agency”) prompted by the...
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Clever moves all around in the B&N and Amazon chess game
Readers who have been following publishing’s digital transition for two years or more will recall the situation in 2010 when five of publishing’s Big Six switched over from selling their ebooks on...
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If the government makes agency go away
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Justice Department has notified the Agency Five (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster) and Apple that it plans to sue them for...
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Auletta’s New Yorker piece is good orientation for thinking about the DoJ case
Writing about the lawsuit the DoJ has instituted against Apple and five leading publishers is very hard. It’s a big issue and doing it justice requires navigating two very large and complex bodies of...
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Royalty Share CEO Bob Kohn alleges DoJ violates the Tunney Act
According to Bob Kohn, an attorney and the CEO of Royalty Share, the Tunney Act very clearly requires that the Justice Department publish (and it was thought originally that this meant “print”) all the...
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The ebook marketplace is about to change…a lot
Now that the DoJ’s response to the public comments has made it overwhelmingly likely that the settlement it negotiated with Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster will be accepted by the...
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Going where the customers are might be an alternative to selling direct
The news that Faber in the UK has partnered with a company called Firsty Group to offer direct-to-consumer services to their distribution clients again calls the question about publishers selling...
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More thoughts on libraries and ebook lending
On Thursday of this week, I’ll be at the Charleston Conference appearing in a conversation organized by Anthony Watkinson that includes me and Peter Brantley. Brantley and Watkinson both have extensive...
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The totality of the relationship is what matters
Like a marriage, relationships between people and companies are seldom made or broken on the back of one transaction or one kind of transaction. They are bigger and more complicated than that. That...
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Barnes & Noble and managing the digital transition
We keep making the case that the split that matters when trying to foretell the future of the book business (and everybody in it) is not “print” versus “digital”, but “bought online” versus “bought in...
View ArticleWhat makes books different…
Before the digital age, retailers that tried to sell across media were pretty rare. Barnes & Noble added music CDs to their product mix when the era of records and cassettes had long passed. Record...
View ArticleHeadliners galore will address Digital Book World 2015
Half of Digital Book World is delivered to the entire audience from the Main Stage. The speakers for 2015 comprise the most illustrious group we have ever had. The headine is definitely that we have...
View ArticleFour of the big five have new deals with Amazon and only the biggest is still...
A reporter called earlier this week focused on what he figures are the upcoming negotiations over trading terms between Amazon and Penguin Random House. I had observed when Amazon was throwing sharp...
View ArticleIf Amazon pricing of ebooks is the problem, is agency actually the right...
In the past week, I’ve had conversations with leading executives at two of Amazon’s competitors in the ebook space. They had strikingly different takes on whether the agency pricing regime, which is...
View ArticleThe “Big Change” era in trade book publishing ended about four years ago
Book publishing is still very much in a time of changing conditions and circumstances. There are a host of unknowables about the next several years that affect the shape of the industry and the...
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