Napster

E- and print book distribution service BookBaby has a reputation for working primarily with self-published authors. The company touts the motto, "Make the little guy look big," which BookBaby chief marketing officer Steven Spatz says the company achieves through promotional tools that connect authors with book review sites and PR firms, ecommerce services, and a large-scale distribution.

Many new eBooks services are setting themselves up with claims to be the next Netflix or Spotify. They aim to be the subscription service for eBooks. But are they just dreaming and hoping that there is a market? Are they truly aligned, or are they adrift of consumer demand? The pundits and soothsayers all have their opinions, but does anyone really know, or are they merely playing to their respective audiences? The truth today is that no one knows and a gut feel is just that - a gut feel.

Today online sales only make up a small fraction of the overall retail space. Their growth, however, is inevitable. Driven by the deflationary realities of price transparency, the face and shape of retail will continue to change. This fundamental shift will affect more than just the retailers. Indeed, it will encompass all aspects of the retail supply chain, from the shop floor to where that shop floor is located.

This report examines the long-term strategic impacts of this shift, highlighting the changes in the environment, the potential competitive responses, and...

Is the library e-book question about to heat up? At the recent Midwinter Meeting in Dallas, TX, ALA executive director Keith Fiels and president Molly Raphael informed a meeting of ALA’s Working Group on Digital Content and Libraries that ALA officials had arranged meetings from January 30 to Feb. 1 in New York with publishers currently restricting e-book lending, including Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin. The announcement suggests that at a time when demand is exploding, librarians are determined to push the issue of e-book lending with publishers.

The first iPod was revealed quietly at a presentation by Steve Jobs on 23 October 2001 and was in stores a month later. The music industry reacted not by examining the successes of P2P and iTunes and working on their own digital music platform, but with DRM (digital rights management), restrictions that attempted to prevent the buyer from copying music.

The problems of poetry are many. It can be difficult to discover. It can be difficult to read and interpret. Are you reading it right? Are you interpreting it right? Are you sure?

The education market has made major technological strides—but in some ways, it’s still a bit behind the learning curve. You hear it all the time—the joke that kids these days come out of the womb with a laptop. More than making for a painful birth, it signifies that the Internet is the future of business, in both sales and marketing. Still, most educational publishing orders are made through paper channels, and direct mail continues to be the major method to attract sales. Then again, teachers are making these purchases much more frequently than the more tech-entrenched students. “You’d think the Internet would be the main

Bill Rosenblatt has been dealing in digital rights management (DRM) since before DRM even had a name. He has helped develop industry DRM standards, he has penned a book called "Digital Rights Management: Business and Technology," and he edits the newsletter DRM Watch (www.DRMWatch.com). For him, DRM isn't only about protecting online content from piracy, it's a way of doing business in today's digital marketplace. Rosenblatt spent some time answering some of our questions about DRM and how it can impact your future. 1. In today's marketplace, what does digital rights management involve and why is it important to book

It's not often a decision about the legality of downloading a free digital track belonging to Metallica affects publishing at-large, but when the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Napster, the controversial online file sharing provider, it sparked questions about digital publishing's overall shelf life. This week's 58-page ruling requires that Napster stop trading copyrighted content online—in the U.S., at least. But whether content is downloaded for free or for a fee, the Napster debate has fueled both kudos and criticism of a system that challenges traditional content rights laws. Thanks to the music market's equivalent of Robin Hood, publishers are learning critical

Copying is Good In this age of Napster, book technologists and digital rights providers often suggest (incorrectly) that the electronic publishing industry requires more sophisticated copy protection and that consumers be taught that copying is illegal. Did I mention that this idea is wrong? Copying is not illegal. Unauthorized copying is illegal And though it may surprise some, authorized copying of digital goods can be an e-publisher's best friend. My company, Digital Goods (formerly SoftLock.com), has a mission to foster an e-publishing ecology in which rights-protected digital content sells, and sells again. In order to do that best, book publishers should not focus on preventing copying,