The Future Of Publishing Blog by Thad McIlroy
September 2nd, 2008
I’m still catching up on my old New Yorker magazines. Such a pleasure! Today I have to share with you a marvelous article from the July 21st issue, thankfully online. It’s called “The Lion and the Mouse: The battle that reshaped children’s literature,” and written beautifully by Jill Lepore. “The Lion and the Mouse” was…
August 30th, 2008
Audiobooks have become a respected and profitable appendage to the book publishing industry. According to the Audio Publishers Association: The Voice of the Audiobook Industry, audiobook sales were estimated at $923 million in 2006 (this year’s survey has not yet been released). The Book Industry Study Group estimates that total U.S. books sales in 2006…
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 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…