2010 is wrapping up like a 77-0 football game. Many experts are sifting through endless spreadsheets, looking for patterns in the numbers which will help justify their relevance to both the publishing and computer industries. Others are checking their offshore accounts. Still others are drafting wills. The Association of American Publishers has reported e-book sales […]
The Great and Powerful Jeff Bezos and his Kindle team at Amazon.com continue to do whatever they can in hopes of staunching the excitement over the next generation of Apple iPads. Rumor has it the second generation of the same 9.7-inch form factor will be released in the first quarter next year. A fully-functional computer, […]
The final trains are leaving the station for the land of prosperity, or, at least, survivability. Now it’s time to see if newspapers and magazines will climb aboard. Whether they’ll be left behind remains a question of choice for these industries which have operated largely without change for most of their existence. The exciting news […]
With Apple’s stock at an all-time high, and Adobe employees bumming change on the corners of San Jose when not revising their resumes, it looks like the greatly-hyped clash over Flash has largely subsided. Chalk up another non-event for the computer technology history books. As AppleInsider reported, “Apple’s decision to allow intermediary tools to port […]
The publishing world continues to be as shaken as the Pope on his recent trip to England. The difference between that situation and the publishing world is that in the United Kingdom, citizens are avoiding the pews, and they don’t look likely to return to their former numbers in our lifetimes. With publishing, illicit sex […]
Today’s lesson is, if you ever perversely doubted it, not all top management is infallible. In a bizarre four-way race with British Petroleum, AT&T and Sarah Palin to see who can deny reality the longest, Apple made my prediction come true regarding the giving away of free “bumpers” for the iPhone 4 in order to […]
Much has happened in the world of e-books this past month. In the face of iPad juggernaut, Amazon.com has been forced to accept reality. The Kindle’s price has been brought more in line with it’s abilities compared to the full-functionality of the iPad. With the Kindle down to $189 from $259, and the Wi-Fi-only version […]
Apple has released sales figures for the first month of the iPad, and publishers are taking note. Publishers Marketplace (no, I don’t understand where the apostrophe went) has reported significant sales of e-books during the initial 28 days of iPad. More significantly, Apple reported 1.5 million e-books were sold in the initial period. This isn’t […]
Although I hung up my comics collecting before junior high, there’s been some very interesting buzz about the future of the business. BusinessWeek ran this story about an early iPad adopting publishing subgenre: comic book publishers. Disney-owned Marvel let loose their comic book application at the launch of the iPad. It enables sales of 500 […]
If you’re doubting the way consumers are pushing the publishing industry, witness the numbers released by Apple. In just a few days since the release of the iPad, the facts are: 450,000 iPads sold 600,000 iBooks downloaded That’s a weekend and perhaps a couple of days. The dollars are speaking. The trees are rejoicing.