Amazon Honors Distributors
Today, Publishers Marketplace had a very interesting news item - at least to me! It is copied below:Amazon Honors 3 DistributorsApparently Amazon recognizes distributors of the year, and this year they...
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I’m usually a person who keeps his own council. I don’t often seek out the help of others when I’ve got decisions to make or research to do. But, recently, I’ve been working on a very complex project,...
View ArticleCPSIA - Sneaking up on us?
On Friday we received a rather interesting email from Amazon related to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act - which was signed into law last August. Here is what was so interesting:I hadn't...
View ArticleProductivity
Why are we so productive when we get super busy?I am in a crazy-busy period, yet I seem to be taking care of lots of little things that have been sitting around my desk for months. I'm trying to...
View ArticleOne of our Own
I hope you all had a great holiday weekend! For those of you that read this blog and are in the 'metadata business' like we are at Firebrand, I wanted to let you know that Stanley Greenfield is in the...
View ArticleMe Too Strategy?
It has been a horrible week in the book world. And, I apologize in advance if this post sounds just a bit cynical. There is no question that the book business is in a world of flux. Between...
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Give Books This Holiday
This post has been simmering for a long time. But the events of the past week have finally stirred me to write this. The book retail market has been in trouble for a long time, and the publishing...
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NetGalley LLC
Today is huge day in the history of Firebrand Technologies! Today, in cooperation with Rosetta Solutions, we are formally announcing the formation of joint venture company called NetGalley LLC. For...
View ArticleThe New Leadership Paradigm
Please read this blog post by Kat Meyer. It really got me thinking not only about the ‘leadership vacuum’ in publishing today, but more importantly how the internet is changing our notions of...
View ArticleRandom Thoughts for 2009
Living at the intersection of Book Publishing and Technology, I live in an interesting place. In some ways, it feels as though I live right on a giant fault line. Two tectonic plates are colliding...
View ArticleNetGalley Update
Since Firebrand took over operations of NetGalley back in December, we've been very busy coming up the learning curve about what the product can do, and can't do, and how it should or could overlap...
View ArticleContrarian view on DRM
At the recent Tools of Change conference, the idea that publishers should protect their electronic products through the use of DRM (digital rights management encryption) was universally poo-poo'd....
View ArticleTime to Review our Mission Statements?
The pace of change in the publishing industry is almost as eye-popping as the changes themselves. The playing field is being re-leveled much more quickly than most of us ever believed it would. Every...
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Farewell to a Friend
As reported by Michael Cairns and others in the blogosphere, it is with great sadness that I report the passing of Stanley Greenfield. Michael's blog has a biography of Stanley, and information on...
View ArticleBlogger Signings at BEA
Because of our interest in the professional reading community, we decided to try something new and fun this year at BEA. We are going to holding "Blogger Signings" at our booth (#4077). "Blogger...
View ArticleBlogger Signing
(An update to this post 5/20/09: For a complete listing, please see the Follow the Reader Blog entry or simply click here. There are now 44 bloggers registered!) As of Friday afternoon, we have 26...
View ArticleIs BEA Reinventing Itself?
Lance Fensterman's blog post this morning came to my attention as I was writing this. It seems interesting to me that the people running the show are concluding that the show needs to change even as it...
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Why Scott Lubeck will be good for the future of the Book
In my opinion, one of the bigger pieces of news in the book industry last week, passed by very quickly and very quietly. The appointment of Scott Lubeck as the new Executive Director of BISG barely...
View ArticleDigging Deep
Many of you who know me know, I’m rather proud of my twin sons for their participation in Karate. This email came in over the weekend, and I found it quite inspiring:Dear Dojo Family, It's only been a...
View ArticlePublishers, Authors, Agents, Retailers - One in the Same?
I woke up this morning thinking about all the hoopla lately about the changing dynamic between authors, agents, publishers, and retailers. Authors going straight to retailers, agents going straight to...
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