What
· Business
· · Publishing
Who Buys Books? · In our family it’s mostly Kindle these days. We share an account, and read on various electronic devices. This works great; recently my wife and I read the Inspector O novels, while my 12-year-old and I read The Hunger Games ...
[4 comments]
[4 comments]
Bits as a Service · It is true, if inconvenient, that information wants to be free. Which fortunately doesn’t mean we’re done with Art or Journalism or the other services embodied in bits ...
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[15 comments]
Good News-Biz News · People still read news, but the howls of pain from the business grow always louder; the news about the news is all layoffs and paywalls. I’d like to offer a cheery counter-example ...
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[5 comments]
On Media · This last Friday and Saturday I spent in the company of 250 or so people who self-define as contributors to the Net, at Northern Voice 2009. On the one hand, it’s like being in a warm bath; everyone here thinks it’s normal to want to tell your story to the world, usually on more than one channel. On the other, everyone goes around talking about “Social Media”; the clock is totally ticking on the time when you can do that unironically. Having said that, our traditional media are looking pathetically clapped-out and we are sure as hell going to need something to fill the gaps. With pictures ...
[1 comment]
[1 comment]
Everything On-Line? · Recently I read The Rebellion Within by Lawrence Wright, a long, erudite, immensely informative New Yorker piece about the internal dynamics of Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad: Who are these people, anyhow, where did they come from, and where are they going? I entirely recommend it. There’s a problem, though: I read it on-line ...
[7 comments]
[7 comments]
Cars and Publishing · While our car was in the shop, we rented a van and it dawned on us that for a 2-child family that’s on the road quite a bit, a van might be a better choice than either of the current chariots, a tiny lovable Golf diesel or a slick but space-challenged Audi wagon. So we’re kind of car shopping. As a side-effect of this process, I begin to think that Consumer Reports is maybe ahead of the world in effective integrated publishing ...
