Day: January 19, 2014

Go Read This | Print as the future of Barnes & Noble | DearAuthor

~ Eoin Purcell ~ 1 Comment

A good piece, the unspoken element here is that the B&N described here is a much smaller B&N in terms of store and probably in terms of store size as well:

Instead B&N should pour that money into the development of a low cost, high efficiency print on demand machine. The current print on demand technology requires the installation of a behemoth device that currently costs about $100,000.  Have you paid attention to the posts about 3D printing? 3D printers cost about $10,000 and can print out guns, exoskeletons, and even small planes. How is it that it requires ten times the cost to produce something made of glue and paper?
Barnes & Noble’s future is in providing quality physical objects to in store customers.

via Print as the future of Barnes & Noble.

Go Read This | John Makinson Interview In The Times of India

~ Eoin Purcell ~ 2 Comments

Not terribly in-depth, nonetheless interesting. Especially when discussing the challenges of being too large (pointing to the value of imprints in the minds of authors) and responding to concerns about Amazon’s self publishing offering (highlighting in this case the ownership of Author Solutions, something I think indicates a lack of appreciation of what Amazon is doing in the digital self publishing space). Where he offers the most interesting note though is below:

At the time of the merger, you said one of the key areas of focus would be e-books . How do you plan to go about the shift?

We have to be guided by the preferences of the reader or the consumer. If they want to read a book on a smartphone we have to give it to them. It doesn’t make a difference if they are reading a physical book or an e-book . What does make a difference is channel substitution. The move from physical to digital books is not as important as the shift from bookstores to online stores. This really affects the way people find and read books.

via ‘Amazon is creating a large market for books’ – The Times of India.

Go Read This | It’s Here: A Library With Nary a Book – NYTimes.com

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

Fascinating piece by Ed Nowatka of Publishing Perspectives rom the NYTimes.com about the new digital library in Texas. I’m struck by the way that digital can, if we allow it to, reinvigorate libraries as well as make them so much cheaper to run and stock:

“We have maintained from the beginning that we are a digital library, not a bookless library,” said Ms. Eklof, who, like the rest of the staff, wore a sporty BiblioTech-branded polo shirt. Books or no books, she said, the goal is the same: to give residents access to information and research assistance.

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It is also economical. At a cost of $2.2 million to build, stock and staff, BiblioTech is a bargain compared with the downtown library being built in nearby Austin, which has a budget of more than $100 million. BiblioTech’s yearly operating costs are budgeted at $1.1 million. “Getting it going cost us a third less than the $3.7 million Bexar County contributes annually to the San Antonio public library system, which has 26 libraries,” Ms. Cole said.

via It’s Here: A Library With Nary a Book – NYTimes.com.