Kabul Market 1973

I've noted before the PND family visited Afghanistan and Pakistan in the mid-1970s and this image is from Kabul.  My recollections are very hazy about this trip and most of my memories had been forgotten until I found these slides in the family archive.  Along this road were many small stores and shops...

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Amazon's Fan Fiction Play

From the Hardy Boys to Mad Men, fan fiction may have been the growth market within the publishing industry that no one knows about.  Fans are by nature the most ardent supporters of character narratives whether they be text or image based and some fairly large online communities have developed around specific shows, characters and franchises.  Over the years, traditional print publishers...

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Collaboration: McGrawHill and the IET in Publishing Partnership

Interesting bit of news came my way this week when I read that McGraw-Hill Professional had entered into a publishing partnership with The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).  No doubt you'll have heard of McGraw-Hill but the IET is a member organization with more than 150,000 members located in over 120 countries.  According to the terms of the agreement, the two companies...

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MediaWeek (V7, N25): A great presentation, What does social mean for Journalism? + More

Chris Anderson the curator of the TED talks writes about killer presentations (HBR): We all know that humans are wired to listen to stories, and metaphors abound for the narrative structures that work best to engage people. When I think about compelling presentations, I think about taking an audience on a journey. A successful talk is a little miracle—people see the world differently afterward....

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Chicken Slaughter Hong Kong 1972

Looks a little like an impressionist painting but clearly due to low light.  This guy is carrying in a load of live chickens tied by their ankles into the central Hong Kong market.  Friday night chicken and chips is a standard in the PND household (all international locations by the way) but we prefer...

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Breaking up the Monolith – The Modular Future of Scholarly Publishing

This post was also on the Publishing Technology blog yesterday.  Join them Scholarly and academic publishing has always been a linear business, even though the activities and mission of these businesses (and associations) has often been quite diverse. As traditional publishers, they may have published journals, textbooks and monographs yet, as the internet imposed itself on their businesses...

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Challenges to the University Press

From the Chicago Tribune:Publishers had barely caught their breath at the loss of those two sizable revenue streams when the e-book tsunami hit. By 2008, large publishers had made major investments toward digital conversion. Many new titles now appear in print and e-book formats, but smaller presses still struggle to go digital, a move demanded by the market. Apart from the University of Chicago Press,...

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MediaWeek (V7, 24): Professor copyright, Springer Digital, Chorus, Journalistic Women?

Bucking for a fight, the head of the AAU Professors wants to protect professorial copyright on campus (CHEd):The group's effort to mount a strong defense of professorial copyright, however, is new. In explaining his concern, Mr. Nelson said colleges previously often sought to assert control over patents but generally left faculty members' ownership of their courses and other writings alone. With the...

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Wailea Maui 1978

At SSP this week I met with someone who told me that they were missing their annual Hawaii holiday in Wailea this year because of circumstances beyond their control.  Here's what it looked like just after we arrived there in 1977.  These images were taken several months apart from our living room window. ...

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Society of Scholarly Publishers Panel: Remixing Content

There are four or five sessions devoted to remixing and reusing content here at the SSP conference which speaks to how much publishers are starting to really think about how they produce content that can be used in a multitude of ways.  I am hosting a Panel and here are my opening comments and the slide deck. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE ...

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US versus Apple, Inc. et al. The eBook Pricing Case

Here is that 81 page opening salvo from the government that they hope proves a conspiracy....

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MediaWeek (V7, N22): Bloomberg Chat, Coursea Expands, Literary Criticism, Bridget Jones +More

Bloomberg terminals benefit from Chat solution making them hard to give up (FT):In a world where many market infrastructure operators provide a cheap, often free messaging tool, Bloomberg reigns supreme. Each day, its 315,000 subscribers exchange 200m messages and have 15m to 20m chats. Rivals have tried for years to break its dominance in messaging, with little success. Financial groups with security...

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