Richard Charkin is full of gloom these days, his two most recent posts have seemed to foretell the inevitable decline of publishing especially the last which features a comment from Niko Jaakkola of the St James Partnership who wonders there:

But, 20 years into the future, will we still see the media mogul of old? Or will it just be Google and their ilk – not to forget the good old state-funded Aunty! – with all of us posting our tuppence worth up on to the net, just as I am doing now!

In counterpoint several folks have seen the swinging of the long tail seriously help them and the master of the long tail, Chris Anderson, has been supping cream over on his own blog with a self contented air. I tend to view the concept as a little fake in that unless you have a highly efficient system to milk that tail then most companies will happily stick with wadding in the deeper end of the pool and avoid the minnows in the shallows. Indeed Anderson’s book is an unsurprising hit given exactly how much attention it has been receiving in the blogosphere and the press. A classic case of marketing making the book (not to diss his work I have ordered but yet to read it).

Speaking of marketing, the costs of pushing a bestseller are high but not as high as pushing a movie and Mark Cuban it seems has had enough, in an open job offer to anyone who can save him millions of dollars, he asks for ideas that will change the way movies are marketed. Seems like publishing is not the only content industry with its woes.

Heading to sleep
Eoin