FutureBook

"Content is a commodity" has been a continual refrain in the debates over digital product and the future of the publishing industry. We're continually told that our stock-in trade is vanishing from beneath us and so we need to change radically, to become different sorts of companies. The problem is, this is just not true - content is not and never will become a commodity, at least not in the sense that the detractors mean it. Read more »

The Huffington Post reports that US Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski have challenged schools and publishers to make the conversion to digital textbooks within five years. Now, on one level, this is straightforward enough - most educational publishers can do this now and already are, to some extent. But the elephant in the room is what they mean by 'digital textbook'. Read more »

So, Apple's big disruption of the entire educational publishing business turns out to be [drumroll]:

• iBooks2
• iBooks Author, and
• iTunes U courseware.

Yesterday, I was worried about what Apple were going to do. Not paranoid - Apple don't create content, which is what we consider our most valuable asset - but worried. Now, though? Not so much. Read more »

Ebooks are the hardly new technology - I've been reading them for over a decade, since my old Palm Pilot days. And web-based retailers aren't new, either. Why, then, is it so hard to buy an ebook for a friend? Read more »

James Daunt’s surprise announcement that Waterstones plan to release their own ereader by spring next year has led to lots of debate on the net about what they’re planning. Responses vary from the wildly enthusiastic to the distinctly sceptical, but what chance does the device (inevitably christened the ‘Wook’ by the twitterati) really stand? Read more »

Pearson's recent announcement of its 'Plug & Play' service has been discussed in various places on the net (including this very site) in usually glowing terms. The talk is all of 'setting content free' and 'embracing open source'. But I think that misses the point. Read more »

There's a lot of talk about Apple's iPad in the popular media - Apple excel at PR nearly as much as they excel at consumer product design! But for all its merits, is Apple's iOS platform (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad) the right horse to back? And is it even necessary or wise to back just one horse? Read more »

After a splendid day yesterday at the Futurebook conference in London, I found myself pondering many things. There was lots to ponder on workflows, business change, market ideas and so many more. One point, though, came up only briefly during the final panel question time, and it crystallised something I've been wondering for a while. Why, exactly, do so many authors and agents feel that they deserve a greater share of the income for ebooks compared with print? Read more »

Tim Spalding from LibraryThing writes provocatively about what will happen to the industry as ebooks make up an increasing proportion of our sales. In particular, he's interested in the feedback effects that kick in as ebook sales go up - leading to an ever-higher ebook proportion. Read more »

Amazon have announced that they will be letting Kindle users loan ebooks to other Kindle users. Although this has been trumpeted in some corners as a major innovation, Barnes & Noble have of course been offering this for some time on their Nook ereader. Read more »