Book Distribution

Another look at the fascinating evolution of the library. The University of Oxford's Bodleian Library has gone through enormous renovations in recent years, and the video below explains the changes and the thought process behind them. It's particularly interesting to see the many levels on which change is occurring, from the role of the library on campus and as part of the community, to the role of the librarian and even the purpose and design of the physical building itself.

I've spent more than half-a-year of my life in Frankfurt, one week at a time. My first Fair was 1976 so this would have been my 39th if I attended them all. I think I missed two, so that's 37. I love it and I get enormous commercial benefit from it. I can't understand people who are in our business who don't; it attracts the top executives from just about every publishing company in the world. But, like just about everything in our business, it is affected by the digital revolution.

China, the world's second-biggest book market after the United States, has long been a consumer of works from other countries, now it is making a push to export its own literature abroad, helped by the e-book revolution. Industry players at the Frankfurt Book Fair said they had observed a change in Chinese exhibitors' focus from acquiring foreign rights to selling the products of China's developing publishing sector. With sales volumes of nearly $18 billion, China is the largest buyer of rights and licences for books published overseas.

JAPAN - The outlook for the domestic market in Japanese-made electronic-book readers has become darker with the recent announcement by Toshiba Corp. that it will stop manufacturing e-book readers. The announcement followed the departure of all other major Japanese electronics makers from the market.

The electronics makers' failure in the market has been attributed to putting e-book readers on the back burner while smartphones and foreign companies' products, such as Kindle of Amazon.com Inc. of the United States, have been aggressively marketed. - See more at: http://digital.asiaone.com/digital/news/electronics-firms-turn-e-book-distribution#sthash.4dtGAhsc.dpuf

Did you do a double-take when you heard that Amazon's opening an actual brick-and-mortar outlet? The web's biggest store, the one that has posed such a threat to traditional retailers, is planning to open an outlet right in the heart of New York City, just footsteps from that department store grande dame, Macy's. Actually, it's not as surprising as you might think. As Darrell K. Rigby, a partner at Bain, explains in a recent HBR feature, many retailers are now combining digital and physical consumer experiences. 

"The Death of the Independent Bookstore?"; "Is the Bookstore Dead?"; "Why Bookstores are Doomed": those headlines are from Slate (2006), Jewish Journal(2011), and Business Insider (2013). For years, journalists have made these types of predictions about the death of independent bookstores: if the chains didn't crush them, Amazon would. If Amazon didn't, they would die anyway because people just weren't reading. For a few years, facts on the ground seemed to support this dire prognosis. During the early years of the new millennium, bookstore after bookstore closed in some of the most reading-friendly cities in America.

he recent news of the opening of an independent bookstore on Manhattan's Upper West Side was greeted with surprise and delight, since a neighborhood once flush with such stores had become a retail book desert. The opening coincides with the relocation of the Bank Street Bookstore near Columbia University, leading the New York Times to declare, "Print is not dead yet - at least not on the Upper West Side." Two stores don't constitute a trend, but they do point to a quiet revival of independent bookselling in the United States. They also underscore

Younger Americans-those ages 16-29-especially fascinate researchers and organizations because of their advanced technology habits, their racial and ethnic diversity, their looser relationships to institutions such as political parties and organized religion, and the ways in which their social attitudes differ from their elders.

This report pulls together several years of research into the role of libraries in the lives of Americans and their communities with a special focus on Millennials, a key stakeholder group affecting the future of communities, libraries, book publishers and media makers of all kinds

The day after the Oakland Public Library reopens after a long weekend, branch manager Nick Raymond doesn't have time to talk. "I could give you maybe five seconds," he says good-naturedly before returning to the flocking patrons.

It's a scene more typical of a blockbuster opening at a movie theater than Wednesday afternoon at a library. But Raymond manages a different kind of collection: Oakland is among a growing number of libraries across the U.S. that lend tools--as in awls, sledgehammers, and hacksaws--as well as other unexpected items like bakeware,

Yoav Lorch explains how Total Boox’s pay-as-you-read model is intended to meet the digital age expectations of ease and immediacy.