Last night at the IPG Digital Quarterly Meeting the guest speaker was James Daunt, he was there to discuss Waterstone's 'deal with the devil' and their plans for digital book selling, this is my view of what happened. Read more »

There's been some discussion about bundling ebooks and print editions recently - because lots of us have been talking about it in connection with the Amazon/Waterstones deal. 

Inevitably, this has led to a counter-discussion which wants hard evidence for bundling being a surefire winner. Philip Jones raises the issue in today's FutureBook email, and points to Evan Schnittman's 2010 blog post taking issue with the idea. Read more »

James Daunt is swimming against the tide - which is kinda cool. Read more »

Today we read the opinions of many in the trade and business press on the surprise move by James Daunt to let Amazon in to Waterstones through the front door. It is interesting to not that many state the obvious and then pull back to cover the bases just in case it’s a move that may win. Many talk about the so called capitulation over digital and hand over of that business to Amazon. Read more »

Today is a new dawn for UK Booksellling, as its premier retail chain Watersones, effectively handed over its digital if not its future to Amazon. We will read in the press how this is a logical move by Waterstones and is the dawn of a new ebook beginning under its new management, but some will now start to ask whether this is the end of the beginning, or in fact the beginning of the end?  Read more »

[Image: Egg Drop Failure, from xkcd, under CC.]

I really thought I knew what today would be like, and then this happened. Read more »

What would George Valentin make of 21st century book publishing?

THE ARTIST is a widely hailed homage to a bygone era and an excellent film about the inexorable march of technology. Spanning a few crucial years in the transition from silent movies to the ‘talkies’, it’s a cautionary tale of the perils of being superseded by progress itself. Read more »

In the past few weeks we have seen a number of announcements coming from James Daunt and the new management team at Waterstones and all of this has been looked at in isolaton. Looking at the bigger picture we begin to see what can be interpreted as Waterstones new strategy or part of it anyway. How much more has to be unveiled will be interesting but what is becoming clear is a distinct repositioning of the UK’s leading book chain. 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 »

Thanks to the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the EPUB format for eBooks has become the widely accepted standard. On the audiobook side, Apple products have popularized the MP3 format. Retailers, it seems, also prefer this format. Barnes & Noble and Waterstones, only sell their audiobooks in MP3 format. Read more »