FutureBook

Ok, Glass, take a photo.

Ok, Glass, film a video.

Ok, Glass, save my local bookstore.

The first two of these instructions Google’s shiny new prototype, Google Glass, can fulfil instantaneously. Simply, pop on the glasses, give the relevant verbal instruction and off they will go. A bit like a digital version of the self-sweeping broom in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The third one they can’t quite do yet but give it a year or so and I’m sure they will get there. Read more »

(1) What is Dark Social?

Dark Social? Sounds cool. What’s that then? Read more »

I'll be honest, when I saw tweets yesterday mentioning a book from 'Kindle insider' Jason Merkoski I was rather excited. The initial interview on the New York Times' blog offered plenty of tantalising quotes. Read more »

Last week in The Bookseller we published the first quarterly bestsellers list with publisher supplied e-book data, following the chart we published in January as part of our Review of the Year. Read more »

In the run up to the IATEFL conference this week, held in Liverpool, I though it would be relevant to write a blog about the state of the English Language Teaching market for digital textbooks and resources.  Read more »

So, RIP the Agency Model. You won’t be missed. What is simply staggering is that publishers thought they could rewrite the laws of capitalism by trying to set the price of a product that they were not actually selling. Read more »

The acquisition of Goodreads by Amazon serves as a reminder of how bifurcated the book business now is. As bookshops waited for a busy Easter weekend, on twitter and other social networks the commentariat declared 'game over' in the battle for the future reader, after Amazon announced that it had bought the bookish social network late Thursday. Read more »

Not exactly a pleasant thought, is it?

Bezos has once again shown that he is a formidable strategist. A Grandmaster. Read more »

This is an old, old publishing parlour game and one that certainly hasn't got any easier in the last five years.

However,this weeks report by Bowker is the best bit of news the chain will have had for a while. 45% of undecided purchases, i.e. where the buyer did not know what they wanted to read, were made as a result of bookshops.  Read more »

The concept of selling direct to consumers (D2C) is, traditionally, alien to most publishers. For centuries, their route to market has been almost exclusively through intermediaries. Then along came digital publishing with a bundle of technologies that gave publishers the opportunity to bypass the intermediaries and sell direct to their readers. This prospect looked interesting. Despite being an industry populated largely by non-technical people, they had recently got to grips with converting their print backlists into digital books. Read more »