Daily Thoughts 04/06/2012

Camille Redon Reading by Odilon Redon (1840-1916)




Daily Thoughts 04/06/2012

I finished watching Dave Crenshaw, Time Management Fundamentals on Lynda.com  I also read some more Sacre Bleu by Michael Moore.  I especially liked Michael Mooe's description of Monet painting trains.

Stripping Covers off the Hunger Games by Thad McIlroy


I sat down and read Stripping Covers Off The Hunger Games by Thad McIlroy today.  It successfully describes the battle between Amazon and Barnes and Noble for control of the book industry.   The book has a solid muckraking feel to it and exposes how Barnes and Noble may eventually fold changing the book industry forever.  The battle is more than just a corporate battle; Len Riggio is enemies with Jeff Bezos.

Not only does Thad McIlroy cover the death of Borders Bookstores, but he also describes how Best Buy, the electronics store is also slowly losing to Amazon. Thad McIlroy describes how the sole remaining major source of profitability for Barnes and Noble is the college bookstores.  Even here, the e-book companies Coursesmart, Flatworld Knowledge, and Inkling are better prepared than Barnes and Noble for an e-book future.

E-books have also affect used bookstores.  There are no resale rights for licensed software or remaindered copies of e-books.  There are also no used e-books.  They are a major blow to the used book industry.

We get a sense of how technology companies like Kobo, Apple and Amazon are outcompeting the book industry and taking over the e-book industry. There is a powerful message underneath what is being said that unless people are willing to adjust and compete, many publishers will close.

It is not just e-books which are changing things, it is also the fast growing market for tablets.  The Barnes and Noble Nook is not as good as the Apple iPad and can barely compete with the Amazon Kindle in the tablet and e-reader marketplace.   There are also more and cheaper e-books on the Amazon Kindle than the Barnes and Noble Nook.

Thad McIlroy mentions a few things and people that I recognize.  Guy LeChalres Gonzales worked at Digital Book World.  I also occassionally read PublishersLunch The Publishing Industry's Daily Read which is a major newsletter of the publishing industry.  http://lunch.publishersmarketplace.com/

There is also a suggestion to read Let's Get Digital  How to Self-Publish and Why You Should  by David Gaughran.   There is a free PDF version on this webiste http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/

This book is very informative.  It is a solid reminder that the publishing industry is changing and needs to be prepared to fight for its life.  This is also true for libraries.  The book is quite strong in its condemnation of Amazon.


Web Bits



Pew Internet now has a libraries site.
http://libraries.pewinternet.org/


New York Tech Made In New York
http://nytm.org/made/

Daily Thoughts 04/03/2012

Knott Wright. "Stop reading that paper!" Four-frame comic strip. Knott and Mrs. Wright sit at a table eating breakfast. When Mrs. Wright asks if Knott can get his mind off baseball for a minute, he replies that her wheat-cakes remind him of baseball because "The batter sometimes misses." She replies "Oh, not always!" as she throws a wheat-cake into his face. Date Created/Published: [between ca. 1900 and ca. 1920]  Part of: Caroline and Erwin Swann collection of caricature & cartoon (Library of Congress)


Daily Thoughts 04/03/2012

I stopped by the WixLounge yesterday which is on 10 West 18th Street, it is a free work space which also has coffee for creatives.  I sat down for a bit, had a cup of coffee and read from my Kindle touch for a few minutes.

I was at Skillshare last night learning how to tell my story.  I now have a much better pitch about what I want.  Skillshare was quite interesting.  They were in the same space as a company called Supply.

I even had a chance to look through their books which were a classic mix of techie oriented reading::  The Startup Owners Manual by Steve Blan, Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, What's Mine Is Yours  The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers,  The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuck, The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Chrstensen, and The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, there were also some books on CSS3, HTML5, and Mobile Applications.  They even had the game, Settlers of Catan which is a classic.

I have been reading more of Sacre Bleu.  There is a lot of mature content in this book  The painters like Renoir, Toulouse Lautrec, Goya, and others rather like their models.  The design of the book is very engaging, the type is set in dark blue which makes the reading experience different.  There are also numerous color pcitures throughout the book.  Some of the pictures are In Rat Mort-- Henri Toulouse Lautrec 1899,  The Swing by Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1899, The Nude Maja-- Francisco Goya 1797,  Hommage a Delacroix, Henri Fantin-Latour 1864, and many others.  This adds a bit of spice and beauty to the book.

I bought a copy of Stripping Covers Off the Hunger Games How 7 Billionaires Are Deciding the Future of Book Publishing by Thad McIlroy.  The book is $2.99 as a Kindle ebook  It is about Barnes and Noble and Amazon and the decisions being made that will change the future of the book industry.  It is an uneasy book.  Part of the unease comes from the new tablet technology which is coming out of both Amazon and Barnes and Nobles.  E-books could very well redefine what a library is in the next decade.  Libraries are traditionally about books. 

I also joined http://www.publishingpoint.ning.com  which is a community of people in the publishing business.

I also saw an incredibly cheap e-book maker, Book Brewer,  http://www.bookbrewer.com 
It does not look to have much quality, but it is cheap.

Web Bits

http://www.nytm.org/made Tech Companies in New York, many hiring, unfortunately no e-book or digital publishers

Public Libraries Expect Change Focus on E-books
http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/04/future-of-libraries/public-libraries-expect-change-focus-on-ebooks/

How We Will Read by Clive Thompson From the Findings Blog
http://blog.findings.com/post/20117251507/how-we-will-read-clive-thompson