From the Content Director: Disappearing Acts
The story didn’t quite play out the way we hoped. It was around this time the numbers of independent bookstores began what has been a slow and sad decline. And in the role of the big bad corporate giant, we seem to have exchanged one bogeyman for another. Barnes & Noble these days seems to many to be part of a solution rather than the cause of a problem, that problem being Amazon’s influence on ebook pricing. Some of us debate DRM (an issue that’s thoughtfully covered on page 12 of this issue), and some of us castigate Amazon as the evil corporate giant du jour. The Department of Justice has become an actor in the story as it tangles with some major publishers (a topic we’ll address, along with DRM, in our Publishing Business Virtual Conference & Expo on Sept. 13). And some of us, whether in print or digitally, just duck our heads and keep on keepin’ on writing, publishing and reading new books.
- Companies:
- Amazon.com
- Barnes & Noble Inc.
- People:
- Eterna Cadencia
- Lynn Rosen