Clay Shirky

The estimable Clay Shirky has written a lengthy piece called "Amazon, Publishers, and Readers" on medium.com saying, essentially, that an Amazon-dominated world would be an improvement over the Big Five "cartel"-dominated world of publishing we have today. This is an apples to oranges comparison. The Big Five are not nearly as broad a cartel as Amazon - which reaches way beyond the consumer books they publish - is a monopsony. Amazon touches much more of the book business than the Big Five publishers do.

The blog for social reading site Findings has posted a lengthy interview with author and Internet consultant Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everything and Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. Shirky starts the interview with the paragraph: Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word “publishing” means a [...]

More Blogs