Book Clubs Reinvent the Digital World If the term ‘book club’ evokes a muddled mélange (if not somewhat terrifying dream) of Oprah covering Tolstoy in gold stickers, growing legions of like-minded enthusiasts discussing scrapbooks or maybe even booksellers in Kabul, classes filled with Scholastic catalogs offering Shrek 2 tie-ins, while exclamation-point-laden mailers emblazoned with “6…Continue Reading
Sleek, Digital Audio Players Could Be ‘Cable TV for Books’ The book-on-tape is a dying breed. But another analog-era ending is no tear-jerker for the audiobook industry, according to publishers and retailers who are witnessing an array of new audio formats such as MP3 CDs, digital downloads, and even satellite radio feeds that are swiftly…Continue Reading
MP3 Audio Is the Next Big Thing. Unless It’s Audiobook Suicide. The average Los Angeles motorist now spends 136 hours per year sitting stock-still in traffic, according to the landmark Texas Transportation Institute study, and audiobook publishers are thrilled. Indeed, the apocalyptic fate of our nation’s highway infrastructure is rehearsed by audio industry brass with…Continue Reading
“A book, e-book, any book!” is the inclusive theme for this month’s New York Is Book Country, and in the spirit of platform promiscuity, e-reading appurtenances will be out in force. For the first time, according to NYIBC president Linda Exman, the fair will feature a New Technology Pavilion to give an expected 250,000 attendees…Continue Reading
Random House Parent Wages Global E-Commerce Turf War There is a special place on Thomas Middelhoff’s atlas of corporate geography that he likes to call “Bertelsmann Valley.” You might think of it as Silicon Valley stretched to a global scale and populated with scenic villages of dot-com shops, a few stray Holstein cows, and a…Continue Reading
