A friend asked me the other day whether we were concerned that Google may simply come to dominate the digital book publishing space. Well in one way there clearly is a concern. If Google were to become a monopolist in the digital books/subscription services area, many companies would find it hard to compete.
Suppose that Google were to start selling access to digital book collections would that be a concern? These thoughts were in part stimulated by the announcement of … Keep Reading
Google have announced an API to their Book Search service. Some explanation and a demonstration of how this can be used at the Librarything. Publishers may be uneasy about the way this tips the information flow about books in the direction of Mountain View (Eoin already is). Amazon and the major publishers must be thinking about the implications of this: will all commercial transactions go with a Google information flow?
The API could be either a step in … Keep Reading
It is sometimes quite difficult to understand the core competence of the business that you run. I was musing about this following a conversation with a book publisher who has been looking at our system and likes it. He thinks that it handles his books well, that we appear to be easy to implement, easy to use, little investment is required and we appear to fit in with the strategic direction of the company he is running. He also appreciates … Keep Reading
At the recent Tools of Change conference I met up with Peter Brantley, the Executive Director for the Digital Library Federation. We had a very brief conversation about Orphan Copyrights and I suggested to Peter that he produce some thoughts on the subject for the Exact Editions blog. He has produced some specific and intriguing suggestions in an essay which should attract discussion. Since his essay is in part a call-for-action which may involve lots of parties — the … Keep Reading
Although it is reasonably obvious that digital magazines are much less damaging to the environment than printed consumer magazines (Chris Anderson has a weirdly contrary view), it is quite hard to do serious measurement of the ecological cost of digital publishing. Steve Souders has done some analysis of web sites with Yslow in an attempt to put some cash/calory value on the inefficiencies of the Wikipedia home page. This is highly conjectural and guesstimatory but probably important. O’Reilly are … Keep Reading
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