The Future Of Publishing Blog by Thad McIlroy
August 11th, 2008
An hilarious short imagined monologue by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos appears on the McSweeney site. Written by Evan Johnston under the title “Jeff Bezos Says Hi to You in the Waiting Room of Your Doctors’ Office,” Bezos confesses that the inspiration for the Kindle began in his childhood: “As a small child, I loved books, and…
August 8th, 2008
Most folks who are following publishing today ignore how far the revolution is spreading. The challenge facing (mostly North American) newspapers grabs the headlines, magazine publishing produces a tear or two, while book publishing is embattled merely by those silly eBooks, that may one day change the landscape of publishing, but in the meantime are…
July 29th, 2008
Many will remember the immortal words of J.M. Barrie in Peter Pan: “If you believe in fairies, then clap your hands.” Many are urging us to do the same for newspapers. For some commentators clapping our hands might represent the only hope remaining for the daily newspaper in the U.S. I thought of this as…
July 28th, 2008
I know I quote extensively from the New York Times in these blogs — what can I do — it’s a great newspaper (remember those?). In today’s Times is a perfect article by Andrew Adam Newman called “Say So Long to an Old Companion: Cassette Tapes.” Needless to say, it discusses extensively the past, present…
July 26th, 2008
A surprisingly strong article appears in tomorrow’s New York Times (July 27, 2008) that tackles the ongoing and vexing issue of whether the increasing hours spent by youngsters on the Web, often at the expense of reading books and other sustained verbal constructions, is turning them into babbling drones, or whether it’s possible that new…