At the intersection of publishing, technology, and marketing.

Some Thoughts on Amazon’s Acquisition of GoodReads

GoodReads + Amazon

Our mentality here is to first do no harm, and make sure that if we’re going to do integrations, users genuinely find it to be a big benefit. — Russ Grandinetti, Amazon VP of Kindle Content (via PaidContent) I’ve been asked by several people what I think about Amazon’s acquisition of GoodReads. It’s funny because [...]

Amazon is Many Things, Including a Publicly-Traded Company

AAPL vs. AMAZ Share Price - Trailing 12 mos.
Graph © Google Finance

Most publishing folks I know always figured that light at the tunnel was probably a train. Now I believe we know it. Not just by their actions but by what they’ll probably be forced to do in the future. A recent piece by Fortune’s Apple-watcher Philip Elmer-Dewitt caught my eye, at first for its wonderful [...]

Platform Lock-In and Consumer eBook Prices

Amazon and Nook Logos

There has recently been a great deal of speculation and study as to what is happening – and what will happen – to eBook prices in a post DOJ settlement world. I must admit up front that I, like many, don’t know, though I am following along and am as curious as the next publishing [...]

Who Can Pull Off Spotify for Books?

24 Symbols Screenshot

In a previous post, I offered music-streaming service Spotify’s ascendence as a signifier of a sea change in consumer media consumption habits. Millions of consumers — especially the 30-and-under demographic — are opting to access their media via ad-supported free services or paid subscriptions, as opposed to buying and downloading files to own. I suspect [...]