Tag: Amazon

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“On the Media” Discusses the Publishing Industry

The November 23 edition of “On the Media” (Publishing: Adapt or Die) focused on recent developments and trends within the publishing industry. (It was an update of coverage from April 2012, so some portions were a repeat).

The segments include:

  • How Publishing and Reading Are Changing
  • No Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  • Is Amazon A New Monopoly?
  • Are Publishers Stuck In The Past?
  • The Story of Pottermore
  • Taking On Amazon
  • The Problem of Knock-Off Books
  • Steal My Book, Please
  • Life After Publishers

You can listen to Publishing: Adapt or Die online or down the recording.

While I don’t agree with everything they said, there are many good segments and even some encouraging developments for publishers.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book The Successful Author for insider tips and insights.

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Archives

RIP Maghound: A Great Idea with One Problem

I’ve been a big fan of the “magazine membership services” website Maghound. With Maghound you select which magazines you wish to receive each month, are charged a fixed monthly fee, and they handle everything else. As a nice side-effect, the publisher doesn’t harass you with endless premature renewal notices or other annoying mailings.

Although I loved the service, there was one wrinkle. The model was built on the assumption of a monthly publication schedule, but few magazines come out monthly any more. Instead of simply charging less for those months, Maghound’s solution was a “substitute list,” which would provide a backup magazine when your preferred one was taking the month off.

Despite this small annoyance, I was greatly dismayed when Maghound emailed me the beginning of February to tell me they were shutting down the service, effective April 30.

Frustrated that I would need to resume interacting with individual publishers and endure their incessant mailings, I happily discovered that Amazon has a comparable magazine service. Interestingly, they handle theirs by the year, not the month.

So I am all set up with Amazon as my new magazine subscription provider, but I will miss Maghound, a great idea that didn’t quite work out.

Categories
News

Amazon’s New Tablet, The Kindle Fire

There is a buzz today about Amazon’s new Kindle Fire, a tablet intended to compete with Apple’s iPad. I first heard the announcement on the radio this morning while munching my breakfast—and I have already received three press releases about it.

Apple reportedly sells 7 out of every 10 tablets, with more than one competitive product left floundering—or having drowned—in its wake. Amazon’s Kindle Fire is competitively required to protect Amazon’s Kindle-loyal readers and all the books that they consume. Karl Volkman, of Chicago-based SRV Network, Inc., notes that Amazon’s foray may be successful because:

  • The Kindle Fire costs far less than Apple’s iPad 2.
  • The Kindle Fire will run a revved-up version of Google’s Android software, an operating system that has given Mac’s iOS software a run for its money on smart-phones.
  • Kindle’s existing momentum as a more popular alternative for reading books than the iPad.

What does this mean? There is now one more device for publishers to work with and more device for people to consider, with the e-reader/tablet market becoming more congested before it becomes clearer. The result is that publishers—and consumers—who pick the wrong device will be left with old hardware they can’t use and books that they can’t read. (How many audio cassettes, video disks, and VHS videotapes do you have laying around?)

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book The Successful Author for insider tips and insights.