Day: July 12, 2010

Quick Link | Top 5 Irish people who almost changed history « Irish History Podcast

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

The Irish History podcast is a great resource. Another smashing post today!

In true European colonial style Daniel paid as much attention to the nearly 2,500 year old accounts of Herodotus as he did to local knowledge. His journey from the outset was plagued by disasters. Firstly African Merchants tried to kill him as they could foresee the threat posed by European trade and after escaping with his life he subsequently lost all his baggage in a fire.

via Quick Link | Top 5 Irish people who almost changed history « Irish History Podcast.

Go Read This | Where will bookstores be five years from now? – The Shatzkin Files

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

I get the sense that Mike is at his wits end on the bookstore issue. And I’d not blame him for that. There does sometimes seem to be a willful process of ignoring the impact the digital changes will have on bookstores.

So the race between single-function e-ink and more full-function tablets accelerates the movement from print to digital book consumption; and the move from print to digital book consumption accelerates the shift from store-based purchasing to online purchasing; and the shift to online book purchasing, whether print or digital, accelerates the reduction of brick-and-mortar shelf space.

And the reduction of brick-and-mortar shelf space increasingly challenges the core proposition of all of today’s largest book publishers.

via Where will bookstores be five years from now? – The Shatzkin Files.

Quick Links | Adapt to recover, warn publishing chiefs | theBookseller.com

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

Publishing is hard!

Barnsley, whose company saw sales fall 13.3%, the largest drop among the top 10 and despite Hilary Mantel’s Booker-winner Wolf Hall, explained it had been necessary to take “a lot of cost out of the business”, including cutting the number of titles published by 20%. “We are focusing more on profit than on market share [now at 7.3%],” she said. “Most publishers over-publish for today’s market.”

via Adapt to recover, warn publishing chiefs | theBookseller.com.

Quick Link | Waging war on WordPress: Posterous prepares the switch | Media | guardian.co.uk

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

I’m not sold on Tumblr or Posterous. If they succeed good luck to them, bit I think in the long run, WordPress and Automattic have the edge!

What’s the attraction? A less bloated back end (there’s pills for that) without multiple features you never use. An end to the barrage of spam comments that plague WordPress – Posterous is free of those, for now. And a service designed to be so email-post friendly that you never even need to login at your desktop; I post everything to my trial Posterous blog from my phone. Photos, videos, text docs, even spreadsheets – if you can email it, you can blog it from your phone. I’m converted.

via Waging war on WordPress: Posterous prepares the switch | Media | guardian.co.uk.