Following on from his response to Jonathan Franzen, Sullivan expounds his views on ebooks:
And his reader’s responses to Franzen here.
Also this piece by Ewan Morrison is a fascinating, and well worth reading, follow-up to his Edinburgh Festival lecture of last year, entitled: Are Books Dead and will the Author Survive?
Still busy and thinking through my ‘authors’ post, but there’s a good deal going on that warrants comment albeit by necessity too briefly.
First up, I think this potential alliance between Barnes and Noble and Waterstones to internationalise the Nook is very exciting. Amazon will be tough to beat and Kobo have done some smart work as the insurgent start-up but to make this market work and continue the innovation there’s got to be more players in the game. Elsewhere you can see Eoin Purcell’s take on Barnes and Noble’s corporate culture here (with the NYT article he references here). The American Editor blog volunteers an idea about franchising the B&N brand (and idea I’d be very wary of, brand dilution alert). I suspect B&N (with added Waterstones?) vs Amazon will be a major theme for 2012. Update: even more on B&N. (HT Graham Beattie.)
The ebook reader advance looks to have moved forward substantially again over the Christmas period though perhaps not quite as quickly as was imagined before Christmas. Mike Shatzkin looks at some of the initial data. PW looks at the adoption of ereaders here and the rapid advance of the Kindle Fire here. Six million units sold in the final quarter of 2011. As I said, tough to beat.
Finally, I retweeted this over the holidays, but reading it again there’s much food for thought in an article by Stephen Page on the Guardian that looks at the history of publishing and segues that into a view of the future for 2012. Two money quotes:
There’s a riot of cross-dressing going on; a scramble as roles are redefined by usefulness, not legacy.
And
The demonstrable creation of value and the fair sharing of it. Publishers exist to create value and audience for writers, and this needs to be at the centre of all publishing endeavours.
Which will lead me on nicely to a future post.
I’m tremendously charmed by this grass roots Little Free Libraries innovation and if nothing else it makes you realise that the digital age can go hand in hand with a much more analogue brand of creativity.
Unless of course, you are Jonathan Franzen. Franzen’s views on the pernicious threat to democracy that is digital reading here, takedown by Andrew Sullivan here.
(Little Free Libraries HT Library Stuff)
Apologies all. Off to a busy start to the year and been tricky to find some good posting time. Also a huge amount of New Year thoughts, resolutions and plans in my mind that need chewing on. But normal service to be shortly resumed. I think I have a little something about authors up my sleeve to kick off with.
Bear with me, back shortly. In the meantime, over to Kitty, Daisy and Lewis. Michelle and I are off to see them next week:
Am slowly (first physically then I’m sure at some point mentally) returning to work. Much good relaxing, reading and thinking done over the holidays, and I managed to do it fairly off grid too, which was rather nice for a change. Still good to be back to the joys of the internet, and just to ease us back into blogging, check out this little video:
Lots of interesting developments appearing post-Christmas so much to talk about.
Some months ago I used this recording of a scene from Independence Day to refer to Amazon’s moves into publishing. It would seem that Forbes thinks Amazon has been playing a very long game. An excellent article and while I’m not totally convinced of their infallibility I’m sure that Amazon is absolutely thinking several moves ahead. 2012 is going to be a very interesting year. (Hat tip to Eoin Purcell)
And frankly I’m all tuckered out. It’s been a long year and I share Charlie Brooker’s view of 2011. I’m only hoping that the season opener doesn’t involve North Korea in any dramatic way whatsoever. Because there’s only one way to write that episode.
For a little recuperation I’m going to pop myself off the grid for a week or so and read some books and maybe even do some offline writing myself. Its lovely and summery here in Christchurch and I’m looking forward to recharging the batteries in the sunshine. As a final round-up take a look at Robert McCrum’s 50 things he’s learned about the literary life.
Its been a really interesting experience writing this blog these past few months and I’d like to thank you for reading it. I hope some of what I’ve written has been useful or interesting to you. For me, the act of writing has been enormously useful in itself and is certainly helping me shape my thinking better. While I don’t think I’m quite there with this blog yet, I’ve learned a lot and I’ve been inspired by paying really close attention to the wealth of interesting thinking across the book world this year. So I’ll be pondering how to improve things over the holidays and I’m keen to make it way better in 2012. And I have no doubt that 2012 will, for the book world at least, be no less eventful.
Take it steady, enjoy the holidays and see you in a few days.
Lots of interesting things around today but only time for a very quick round-up.
This presentation, from the Economist is really interesting, partially because I recognise in its insights a great deal of my own change in behaviour as a reader, but also because its taking the nature of reader demand really seriously. I think that as publishing starts to fully inhabit a digital approach it will ease back in thinking about digital technology and look much more energetically at how to understand, interact with and reach readers. The truly interesting thing is what this medium does to the behaviour of readers and this ‘Lean Back’ concept is an interesting way of exploring that avenue. And it looks like the flexibility of tablet/smartphone technology is opening up some really interesting opportunities for a much more varied range of reading options.
The Amazon price comparison lash, backlash and counter backlash continues. My view being that price competition, if you decide to use it fulsomely, will inevitably lead you to run such promotions and that ultimately this is in many ways only a supercharged techie version of the (more genteely delivered) John Lewis price promise, ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’. Yes it can be seen as bad sportsmanship but then again others will see that as playing to win and as can be seen from this press release Amazon is absolutely in the game to win. Next year will be pivotal.
The ABA’s Oren Teicher hits back at Amazon’s $5 bounty move:
We could call your $5 bounty to app-users a cheesy marketing move and leave it at that. In fact, it is the latest in a series of steps to expand your market at the expense of cities and towns nationwide, stripping them of their unique character and the financial wherewithal to pay for essential needs like schools, fire and police departments, and libraries.
Still not cricket.
Green Light 