‘To echo what many publishing executives have been saying to us, 2011 will be the year when digital finally takes a significant and measurable share of UK ‘book’ sales.'

Philip Jones’s blog, January 2011 Read more »

The news last week was again littered with the impact on how the publishing industry deals with new entrants and in particular the Gorillas that are now in the back yard. Read more »

Yesterday we sat down with someone who is starting a new digital venture. As we discussed the potential, the market, the options and much more, it became apparent to us that there are a lot of things that applied to the physical book market, that simply do not apply, or should be questioned in the digital market. Read more »

Technology is not only changing how we do business and is introducing a significant challenge in reducing the time to do business. As technology speeds up processes it also highlights those age old time blockages and inefficiencies that didn’t matter, or could not be addressed yesterday. Read more »

The UK OFT (Office of Fair Trading) has today cleared Amazon’s proposed acquisition UK Internet retailer The Book Depository. Many objections were submitted by the UK trade who were mindful of the growth of Amazon and the leverage that The Book Depository potentially gives it. Read more »

The Nikkei newspaper’s report that Amazon will launch a Japanese Kindle service within 2011 ends two years of gloomy speculation across an industry nervous about the impact of the global eBook giant. The leaders of Japan’s publishing industry may wish to consider three questions, the answers to which will indicate how their industry will develop over the next ten years. Read more »

Racing it’s not just about the horse, or the rider, the form book , the course and the conditions. The winners and losers are often decided by all these factors and more. Outsiders do win and favourites lose and that’s what makes the ‘sport of kings’ interesting.

So can Kobo steel up on the inside track and get placed or do they remain an also ran? Read more »

The publishing business is a great place to be right now. The dominant theme from Frankfurt was not of an industry in crisis, but one in extreme flux - a state of heightened excitement that serves to imbue almost everything we do now with an importance beyond the norm. Read more »

Ebook markets in many countries are developing at a rapid pace. I’d like to share an opinion on that from a perspective of an ebook user living in one of such countries: Poland. Comparing to what you see in US, where know-how, devices and content are flowing outside, the factors which push a medium-size ebook market forward are different, to be precise – totally different. Read more »

There is always the temptation to cast the biggest player embroiled in an event as the lead player, as the one in charge, in control and closest to winning. Facebook is big, and their dance card is full of content players, but they aren't the belle of the ball, they aren't playing in the content industry let alone winning it, and they certainly aren't in control of the content libraries.

They haven't "quietly given their ¾ of a billion users access to 3 of the worlds largest content libraries, direct to their screens, in a completely device neutral environment." Read more »