Thad McIlroy - The Future of Publishing

…if you have a university degree AND a publishing certificate, speak English and French and know XML.
This is but one of the challenges of book publishing today: The technical skills required are exploding, but the economics still suck.
I don’t wish to heap ridicule on this particular company: it’s happening everywhere.
Publishing Assistant
Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc./Women’s Press
(Toronto, [...]

…I’ll believe that the printed book is dead. When they stop printing a thousand dollar 20-volume dictionary, wisdom prevails.

If you’re a cheapskate, you can buy the miniature version for five cents less than $400, and they’ll toss in the magnifying glass!
Making the rounds of the blogosphere, Twittersphere and ignoramosphere today is the inaccurate but inflammatory [...]

I’ve known about the excellent Project Gutenberg for a long time now. It was founded in 1971 by Michael Hart and is the oldest digital library. I hadn’t been back to the site for several years because in my mind it was still the place where all you could download was ASCII text versions of [...]

I uncover some unusual sites and blogs because I have a Google Alert for “future of publishing.” I can’t imagine I would have found it otherwise.

Andrew Shaffer is the author of the forthcoming Harper Perennial Paperback Original Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love, to be published January 4, 2011. (Unusual exactitude for a big publisher. [...]

This blog entry was prompted by a contemporary cartoon strip about book burning.

It’s by Randall Munroe of xkcd.com (via Kate Eltham’s Electric Alphabet blog).
This led me down a long road of inquiry, first into the history of book burning, then over to Ray Bradbury’s wonderful 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451. Although most associate book burning historically with Nazi Germany, [...]

My friend Bob McArthur recently wrote to me, “Am nearing the end of Chris Hedges Empire of Illusion…a dark and angry book about the rotting from within of North American culture.” Later he sent an excerpt, which itself contained an excerpt from Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show [...]

I’m catching up on some very old email, and found a note from my sister Sue from before Christmas directing me to AbeBooks’ Weird Book Room. There’s quite a treasure trove here, and it’s tough to pick a favorite. Here’s one that’s pretty good, Andrew Kirk and Jane Moseley’s “Dead Pet: Send Your Best Little [...]

When we evaluate new technology I believe that the key equation is “push or pull.” It is the rare new technology product released to the public where the reaction is an immediate: “I want that.” I suppose Facebook and Twitter are recent examples of “I want that” being a very common refrain. It certainly didn’t [...]

“The McGraw-Hill Companies reported a 43.2% increase in fourth quarter EPS,” says today’s press release.(Log-in may be required).
The big gains were in McGraw-Hill Education at 2.6% and in Financial Services at 10.6%.
“Information & Media” declined by 11.4%; you’ll have to dig deeper than I have to figure that one out.
The major message I’m receiving is [...]

A fine blog post from Joe Esposito that I wish I’d written…a small excerpt:
Empires, by definition, begin their decline at their peak. Today Amazon bestrides the publishing world like Caesar, and it may seem far-fetched to think of this company slipping from its dominant position. There is some doubt, however, that Amazon can continue to [...]