How Social Sharing, E-samples, And Mobile Can Revitalize Book Publishing

The book publishing industry is arguably in its most disruptive cycle of change since the advent of cast metal type. To be sure, it's a century-long disruption of which digital media is only the latest phase. Today a host of digital media diversions -- ecommerce, social media, streaming video -- have furthered the attrition of book-reading spurred by earlier audio and visual media.

John Parsons (john@intuideas.com), former Editorial Director of The Seybold Report, is an independent writer, ghostwriter, and editor. He is the co-author of the interactive printed textbook, Introduction to Graphic Communication, on the art, science and business of print, which has been adopted by Ryerson, Arizona State, the University of Houston, and many other schools and vocational training centers. Custom editions of the book are under consideration by major printing companies and franchises for internal training purposes.