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January 9, 2007 • 10:39 am 2

$100 million for e-paper??

Eoin Purcell

[via Ryan Sholin's blog (well worth reading by the way)]

Wow
Red Herring reports on a huge investment by Oak Investment Partners and Tudor Investment Corporation in an e-paper venture:

In one of the largest venture capital rounds in European history, Plastic Logic announced Wednesday that it had raised $100 million to build a factory in Germany to make display modules for electronic reader products.

Now that is a fat chunk of cash and Ryan has some further points on the implications of e-paper. I have mentioned them here too. It looks like, over the past few days, as if people are moving to stack their cards in the right pile for digital and that all of a sudden the corporate world is seriously considering the changes the digital revolution is forcing on the world of publishing and actually acting to get ahead of the curve.

Interesting times indeed
Eoin

Filed under: Books, Bookselling, Future of Books, Future of Publishing, Innovation, Reading, , , , , , , , ,

January 8, 2007 • 9:17 pm 3

Publishing in 2007 . . . and beyond

Eoin Purcell

Predictions
I am not big on predictions, certainly not in the sense of being able to predict what will happen in a given year. That is why I really enjoyed this post on PersonaNonData today. There is a lot to what he is saying but one of the key paragraphs is this:

In publishing, social networking, wikis and blogs etc. will become the primary publishing platform for educational publishing. Currently, the environment is anarchic and it is hard to see how the formula heavy education market could leverage this technology to produce a better product. I think it is inevitable.

It reminds me of a great book I read called Nine Shift which I am fairly sure I mentioned before (indeed I did) and should be read by anyone thinking of predicting. The most important thing about PersonaNonData’s post though is that it goes a very long way towards explaining the kafuffle below.

The News: doom, gloom and for sales signs
It has been a busy few days for news and much of it reflects the state of play in the book trade. It really kicked off with the news of AMS’s failure (also covered well by Richard Charkin, and tonnes of links to be had and read at Edward Champion’s blogsome more on Chekhov’s Mistress and last but 0f course not least the NYT).

Then came the rather more happy news that Wolters Kluwer was selling its educational publishing arm and expected according to some reports to glean €700 million from it. Given that Riverdeep acquired Houghton Mifflin recently, and that as the reports suggest there are some pretty serious bidders about, I’d say the valuation looks pretty good. What is more I suspect we will see the valuations of education publishers stay firm as companies shift ground to accommodate the changes that are discussed by PersonaNonData. You should read his post and the book to get a clear idea of what they entail!

Enjoying an early evening in!
Eoin

Filed under: Books, Bookselling, Business, Future of Books, Future of Publishing, Innovation, , , ,

January 8, 2007 • 6:21 pm 6

I like this though it makes me sad!

Eoin Purcell

book/daddy (A new find for me) has a great but unsettling post about exactly how rare it is to find stimulating book chat in your daily life. I have taken a large chunk from the piece but it is much better in the whole:

Actually, books have rarely been a topic of conversation in offices or parties — unless it’s among a select group of people who just happen to be avid readers and who happen to have read the book under discussion or at least read reviews of it or perhaps an interview with the author or perhaps even just an earlier work by her. If you think about that, you realize how small or rare such a happenstance would be. If you’re already hammering away at your keyboard to tell me how wrong I am, how you enjoy such casual bookchat everyday at work, you must realize how fortunate/educated/isolated you are. It’s a chief reason people join bookclubs or attend literary series in the first place: They don’t have enough ordinary literary discussion in their lives, so they have to organize some.

January seems to be moving along nicely (thank god!)
Eoin

Filed under: Books, Future of Books, Reading,

January 1, 2007 • 10:17 pm 6

Reading and 2007

Eoin Purcell

Terry Whalin has some interesting stuff on reading and what can be achieved in a year with small efforts!
Here

This in particular scares me:
* If you read five books on one subject, you are one of the world’s foremost leading authorities on that subject

Filed under: Books, Reading, ,

January 1, 2007 • 10:13 pm 0

Bookstore: Macmillan’s not so secret weapon

Eoin Purcell

Bookstore Demo Video
Richard Charkin CEO of Macmillan linked today to a very sweet demo of the forthcoming Bookstore technology. Macmillan subsidiary MPS Technologies is behind the product which will be launched in 2007. The merits of the scheme aside (at first glance it offers a great degree of control of publishers of e-content while allowing access and search and thus suggests a decent model) the actual look of the demo is impressive and worth checking out if you are in anyway interested in the future of publishing.

Click here to visit MPS and here to see the video (annoyingly it launches as a pop up).

Welcoming 2007 with a smile
Eoin

Filed under: Books, Bookselling, Business, Future of Books, Future of Publishing, Innovation, , , , , , , , ,



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