The Future Of Publishing Blog by Thad McIlroy

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January 10th, 2012

The Death of Canadian Book Publishing

Cultures die symbolically. Canadian culture took a major hit on Monday with the sale of Canada’s most important book publisher, McClelland & Stewart. Canada’s largest university, the University of Toronto, took a gift horse and sold it to the Bertelsmann AG, the fifth-largest book publisher in the world, via its proxy, Random House of Canada.

December 31st, 2011

Boxie, the Story-Gathering Robot

Robotics is advancing by leaps and bounds, in no small part because of the superb FIRST robotics competition launched by Dean Kamen in 1989. A new development with value to the future of publishing is Boxie, the Story-Gathering Robot, invented by Alexander Reben at the renowned M.I.T. Media Lab. Boxie is a robotic journalist; it could handle those “man on…

December 7th, 2011

When Book Publishing Gives You ISBNs, Make ISBNade

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) today published its new policy for best practices in assigning ISBNs to digital products, aka ebooks. With endorsement from BookNet Canada, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), and IBPA, the Independent Book Publishers Association, it’s therefore applicable across North America (“but could be applied elsewhere as well”).