The Future Of Publishing Blog by Thad McIlroy
January 10th, 2012
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.
January 4th, 2012
How I wish that were a compliment. It likely would have been in 2004 when Best Buy was named “Company of the Year” by Forbes. Today it’s an insult. Or a threat. Or a doom-filled prediction.
December 7th, 2011
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”).
December 4th, 2011
His fascinating and important Domino Project concluded, Seth Godin is still pondering writing and reading and all things in between. Godin’s latest post, Selling vs. Reading, includes the usual ramblings, some meaningless, a few trenchant, and one entirely ingenuous.
December 1st, 2011
The Guardian in the U.K. has asked me to participate in an online chat at 12-2pm GMT (7-9 am EST) this Friday, December 2nd, for an insider’s guide to self-publishing. The focus is on academics and researchers as the chat comes via Guardian Professional’s Higher Education Network. Key issues differ between academic publishing and trade…