“End of an era!“ writes a colleague from London when the news hit: https://publishingperspectives.com/2020/12/reedpop-cancels-new-yorks-bookexpo-bookcon-retiring-the-event-permanently-covid19/ “No more dinners, dancing, or fun, ever again, anywhere, any more…” “Oh, sad,” I responded. “What times we’ve had!” I remember the BEA show in Miami in 1994, the heady elation after the first day of our Internet Start-up Booth. It →
May Day! It’s May Day! We have three options to celebrate this day: a joyful, youthful celebration and dance; a protest of the masses against the elite; or a desperate cry for help. This pandemic year, it looks like all three types of May Day celebration were in order for the publishing industry. Remember the →
OBS is back again at the Frankfurt Book Fair again this October, ready to hit the ground running, exploring, and discovering digital publishing innovations and ideas for our clients and partners. One exciting initiative we are exploring is how blockchain networks can be put to use to update and streamline traditional publishing processes. The combination →
Just back from the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual meeting, where we witnessed and participated in an AI-enabled, transformative merger of humans, health care, and publishing. Here’s a hypothetical: Say you visit your GP after a fall on the ice, because of sharp pain in your side. Bruised ribs? Broken? Instead of →
Many decision points contribute to a trade editor’s GO/NO GO final opinion. A bestseller will generate revenue to keep the doors open and the firm able to further its mission. A mid-list winner fills an ongoing content need and will keep selling and selling, slow and steady. In these POD days, when the words “out →
As things speed up to such an extent that there remains no time any more to muse, ponder, discuss, cogitate, and write things down, the old adage that the pen is mightier than the sword appears to be morphing into “the phone is mightier than the sword.” Witness the recent rise of live streaming as →
Back in the Paleolithic Age of Paper, information moved slowly. Slow like the Glyptodon. Books took nine months to gestate from manuscript to print. For content to reach readers beyond the market of origin, the Sub Rights Director at Publisher #1 (the primary publisher) would sell foreign rights (one of multiple “sub” rights, including serial rights, TV →
When a publication gets empowered by blockchain technology, one can truly say that a reader never steps into the same book twice. Blockchain enables internet-published content to emulate life itself — both the perceived (the content), and the perceivers (publishers and readers) — in a recorded environment that captures and publishes a constant state of content →
Before Amazon, there was the Online BookStore (OBS), now Open Book Systems (OBS). We maintained a list of all the publishers who had online presences; it took up about half a computer screen in 1994. Before starting the Online BookStore, our company packaged books for publishers, one of which was John Quarterman’s The Matrix (Digital Press, →
Meme Machinery 101: The Evolution of a University Press Marketplace” by Laura Fillmore President, Open Book Systems (OBS) Presented to AAUP Annual Meeting at Snowbird May 24, 1996 Excerpted from http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/papers/mememach.htm Copyright © 1996 by Laura Fillmore; written permission required to reprint. Coming back to the Wasatch mountains at Snowbird is a welcome pilgrimage for →