Category Archives: book business

The subscription model in the book industry: then and now

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Today, nearly everything is available on subscription. The subscription model entails selling a product or service for a recurring price. Depending on the company and product, the bill can be paid every month, every year, or some other interval. The book industry used a somewhat different subscription model beginning in the 17th century, where authors could raise the money to print their books before publication. It amounted to an early version of crowdsourcing. Selling e-books requires a different business model than selling printed books. The publisher has one master copy of the book, which it makes available to customers’ e-readers. When they sell to libraries, they have imposed a new subscription model that essentially rips off libraries and, in the case of public libraries, tax payers. Where did it come from and what are libraries doing about it?

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Artificial intelligence and publishing: promises and threats

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Artificial intelligence is upending all of society. Looking specifically at the publishing industry, artificial intelligence is changing the way people write and how the written word gets to the consumer. I have written a brief overview of AI’s implications for writing anything from student papers to professional works. They run the gamut from improved efficiencies to downright scary social problems. Similarly, AI is upending the publishing business. It offers both promises of improved efficiency and threats of havoc and chaos. I have also written about artificial intelligence in libraries. Artificial intelligence is just the latest in a centuries-long parade of disruptions in publishing. Looking at history can show us the patterns that will likely continue.

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John Newbery and the history of books for children

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John Newbery is known as the father of children’s literature. He was not the first publisher to issue books for children. He was not even the first to publish books for children to enjoy, but he did it on a much larger scale than anyone before and introduced many innovations. Before the invention of printing, when hand-copied books cost more than most people could afford to pay, there were no books for children. The concept of children as a special customer base for books and the idea that children ought to enjoy them seems to have originated in the 1690s. Newbery printed his first children’s book in 1744. The publishing industry has never looked back.

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Johannes Gutenberg and his revolutionary printing press

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As everyone knows, Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press. Like much of what everyone knows, it’s not quite true. But no one else in the history of printing had nearly his influence. As Mark Twain expressed it, The world concedes without hesitation or dispute that Gutenberg’s invention is incomparably the mightiest event that has ever happened in profane history. It created a new and wonderful earth, and along with it a new hell. It has added new details, new developments and new marvels to both in every year during five centuries. . . Whatever the world is, today, good and bad together, that is what Gutenberg’s invention has made it: for from that source it has all come. But he has our homage; for what he said to the reproaching angel in his dream has come true, and the evil wrought through his mighty invention is immeasurably outbalanced by the good it has brought to the race of men. Gutenberg wasn’t the first to use movable type or metal type, but he couldn’t have known about earlier uses. And he was apparently the first to see the possibilities of a wine press for printing. Most important, he was … Continue reading →

Why you have to wait for ebook best sellers at the library

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Have you ever eagerly looked forward to the publication of a new book? If the publisher expects it to be a best-seller, you won’t be alone. Your public library will order as many copies as it thinks it needs to let as many people as possible check it out. But if very many patrons want to read it as an ebook, most of them will likely wind up on a waiting list. What’s the difference? For one thing, the library can buy dozens of copies of a printed book. A patron checks one out, reads it, and returns it. It can’t buy dozens of copies of an ebook. The publisher has the one master copy. Every transfer of an electronic file creates a new file. An individual customer can’t easily make a copy of that copy for someone else. But when a library lends an ebook, it puts a new copy on a reading device. At the end of the loan period, that copy disappears. Logically, it would seem, deleting the digital copy should have the same effect on the publisher as returning a physical book to the library. Publishers don’t see it that way.

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