As we trek along in the Human Machine Interface (HMI) – driving, texting, reading, recording – we inform our electronic environment, enabling it to grow smarter as it records our thought paths and virtual lives. We allow this thinking machine to sort, separate, sequence, map, aggregate, and otherwise contextualize our digital footprints with billions of others’ →
OBS founder and president Laura Fillmore recently revisited and updated this article she wrote over 20 years ago for The Journal of Electronic Publishing, and she would like to thank Editor Maria Bonn at the University of Illinois for the invitation to do so. The internet has introduced so many radical changes in our publishing →
We were surprised to see in the Express Tribune/International New York Times recently that some folks, like Shopify, think that the first ecommerce transaction on the internet happened in 1994. We at OBS need to correct the record, and note that Open Book Systems (which was Online BookStore back then) actually sold the first online →
Talk about the publishing cycle, long-form! Last fall, Margaret Atwood delivered her new novel “Scribbler Moon” to the Future Library Project (http://www.futurelibrary.no/), to be read in 100 years after it is printed on some of the thousand tiny new trees that the project has just planted in the forest outside of Oslo, Norway, home of →
Looking forward to the London Book Fair in two weeks, and especially the Research and Scholarly Forum. In our 30+ years of e-publishing experience, it seems like the real innovations come out of the STM space. That may be because scientists seek to discover or uncover the truth as they publish. Scientists tend to stretch →
A recent article in The New Yorker, “The Programmer’s Price,” described a new business model in the tech world: programmers are working with agents to find business opportunities and negotiate contracts. This demonstrates a shift in how the tech world and other industries view programmers – no longer are they hired to sit in a →
Tom Kabinet, the controversial online marketplace for used ebooks, has won the first (albeit small) battle in what promises to be a long war regarding the resale of digital files. Tom Kabinet received its first legal notice from the Dutch Trade Publishers Association just 8 days after the site went live; now, only one month →
A debate is raging in the publishing industry about whether the selling of secondhand ebooks is legal. One startup isn’t waiting for the dust to settle. Tom Kabinet.nl is an online marketplace for used ebooks that essentially acts as a liaison between buyers and sellers: it processes credit cards (for a fee), and oversees the →
Faced with Amazonian Losses, Indie Publisher Sells Books out of Car Trunk An independent small publisher called recently, seeking to maintain control of, and expand market reach for his successful books on organic farming. His leading title, in its 9th edition, has sold over 18,000 copies. He wants to control business model, pricing, content, and →
I caught a glimpse of the new “book futures” market on Day – 1 of the London Book Fair last Sunday. The pre-show Digital Conference was my “jet lag day,” that first day after an all-night Boston-to-London flight. Warm room, low lighting, comfortable chairs, it was tempting sometimes to try and listen to the presenters →