The Future Of Publishing Blog by Thad McIlroy

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November 30th, 2022

An Authoritative Look at Book Publishing Startups

NOTE: The new version of this report was published by Publishers Weekly in November, 2022, with a new title: Book Publishing Startups in the United States 2022: Industry Insights, Analysis, and Investment Opportunities. It is fully updated; hundreds of new listings, and all of the analysis reconsidered. The database can be accessed separately online at…

October 28th, 2022

NFTs Come to Publishing at PageBreak

The new PageBreak 2022 Conference launched in San Francisco Wednesday night with a reception at the Internet Archive and a delightful tour of the facility by the amazing Brewster Kahle. Here’s the conference program. I’m presenting Friday on my new pet topic: NFTs and publishing. The session description is “NFTs, blockchain, crypto, Web 3 are…

October 16th, 2022

A Fascinating NFT/Publishing Startup

My news story about Book.io has just been published in Publishers Weekly (PW), in the weekly print edition and online. It was prompted by the news that Ingram has made an investment in the company, and anything that Ingram invests in is going to draw the publishing industry’s attention. (And now, a day after this…

March 23rd, 2020

Free Ebooks: An Embarrassment of Riches

There’s a lot of coverage of the challenges facing book retail right now because of the coronavirus. The situation is shocking and sad. But it feels careless to forget that even if every bookstore in the world shut down for the next 12 months, people would still have over ten million different ebooks available for…

September 11th, 2017

Looking at OptiQly: Mastering Online Marketing for Book Publishers

Designed to help publishers market their books online, OptiQly is a brand new software-as-a-service (SAAS) platform for book publishers. Initially just for Amazon*, OptiQly (pronounced optically) assesses a book’s “Brand Authority” and “Product Authority” to derive a “OQ Score” comparing that against a pre-determined optimal measure. To reach a top OQ score it recommends a series of steps to improve “Authority”.