It was a seemingly innocuous situation… I was sitting in a room filled with publishing types: book publishers, librarians, agents, industry press, metadata specialists, and consultants of varying shapes and sizes. We were there in an advisory role to one of the digital publishing conferences. Read the rest of this entry »
The history of digital reading in a fascinating one and I believe exploring its development arc helps predict the trends that may lie ahead. Thinking about what worked early on – meaning what was read in digital form – use cases where search, find, and quick read were the primary means of interacting with the content, such as encyclopedias and reference works, directories and other data driven compendia.
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing two of the most influential forces in publishing today: Cathie Black of Hearst and Jane Friedman of Open Road Integrated Media at the Publishing Business Expo. We spent an hour talking about the impact of digital on the book and magazine industries and both Cathie and Jane were immensely impressive. To open our session entitled Reinventing Today‘s Publishing Company, Cathie and Jane each spent 10 minutes in their opening remarks. Jane presented the 4-layered “cake” that is the structure of Open Road, and Cathie played a video and followed it up with an overview of the goal behind the massive effort that will roll out behind the campaign entitled “Magazines, The Power of Print.”
After she played the video Cathie said “We don’t have a print problem in magazine publishing, we have an advertising problem.” I couldn’t agree more.
© 2009 Black Plastic Glasses. All Rights Reserved.
This blog is powered by Wordpress and a guitar player's Blues Licks website.
meg white
on Aug 1st, 2011
@ 7:33 am:
you may be going mainstream, but you’ll never be ordinary.
[Reply]
Martyn Daniels
on Aug 1st, 2011
@ 8:06 am:
Evan probably one step behind you for different but silimliar reasons
Still have a lot to say and input but it like watching the children grow up – sometimes you have to let go
Martyn
[Reply]
Jack W Perry
on Aug 1st, 2011
@ 9:39 am:
I am sure we will hear many of your thoughts in the various other venues. Good luck and look forward to you r next blog.
[Reply]
David Worlock
on Aug 1st, 2011
@ 11:48 am:
Evan Well , I have loved your work on this site , and I think your new glasses are an improvement . But as to your point ? Well , I have known that we were living in a digital first world since 1985 and the revolution in science and professional publishing . The frustration has been that general consumer entertainment publishing workflow and marketplaces took so long to catch on – and always assumed that they were somehow ” publishing ” in essence . So lets drop digital – and lets drop “publishing ” with it !
Thanks for great arguments sustained over the years ! David
[Reply]
Jay Huldeen
on Aug 11th, 2011
@ 8:15 am:
Evan, my dear friend, you went corporate back in 1986. I’m glad you have finally realized it.
It would be interesting to hear your musings on the how the effective transfer of control of ‘content’ (what a dreary word when the emphasis is on the first syllable!) from the old order to the digerati will affect our culture generally. Do you think we will continue to get stupider, or are you hopeful that somehow there will be a recovery of real literacy? Or am I simply wrong in my premises?
The new glasses are very corporate, and a good look for you. Please let us know where to find your new blog.
[Reply]