Tag Archives: history

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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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 →

Major disruptions in the book publishing business

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Ebook readers like Amazon’s Kindle roiled the book publishing business. Big time. Ebooks now outsell printed books. We can carry one device with dozens of books, and it weighs less than any one of them would in print. Major bookstore chains went belly up. But ebooks are hardly the first major disruption in book publishing. The printing press only came along about 700 years ago. It eventually put an end to the scriptoriums that had produced manuscript books for centuries. Printing put books in the hands of more readers than the scriptoriums ever could, but books remained relatively expensive well into the 20th century. Selling books by subscription and cheap paperbacks sold in other places besides bookstores revolutionized book publishing. These practices made books available to people who couldn’t otherwise afford books. Or who couldn’t otherwise easily find them.

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