There is an interesting interview with Jason Epstein and Dane Neller, chairman and CEO respectively of On Demand Books in New York, at Knowledge@Wharton — with some interesting insights:
- "Authorship (…) will remain what it always has been." — collaborative will remain the exception
- Publishers are not innovative and have never been — anecdotic evidence on how in 1951 Epstein "invented" the paper back edition of regular hardback books
- The toner based book market, represents about 6% of the books market in the U.S., is twice as big as the e-book market and is estimated to grow to 15% in the next three to five years
- books going digital get countless opportunities for viral publicity on YouTube and its successors (!)
- digitization makes the backlist accessible at virtually no more than printing cost — a revenue opportunity
- Publishing conglomerates are inefficient; Google &co. are a threat by the control they (could) exercise — there is need for decentralized content provision
And the one I liked most: "Stephen King and John Grisham (…) is a separate activity from mainline bookselling. All John Grisham needs is a printing company and a truck. That's all the publishing work that has to be done, because those books are presold. You just ship them to Costco and other distributors and there you have it. That's a different arrangement than what it takes to publish a real book of substance."
