Selling e-Books as Agent
Posted on February 17, 2010
Phil Leigh
Amazon’s grudging agreement to act as agent when selling Macmillan e-books next month has important implications.
An agent is a business partner. However, Macmillan’s partnership notion is not fifty-fifty. The publisher concludes that they contribute more than twice the value of Amazon by taking 70% of the sales price for themselves and leaving only 30% for the online merchant.
There could hardly be a better example of irony considering that the 167-year-old publisher never found enough time to develop an e-book business on its own. Instead, 14-year-old Amazon.com invented the Kindle. To date Amazon has done more than any single business to launch the entire e-book industry, yet it gets the short end of the stick. Read more…
Filed Under Podcast Audio | 3 Comments
Books of the Future
Posted on September 29, 2009
Phil Leigh
If you would like to learn how authoring will change in the next decade, this audio is for you.
Recently I encountered a newly published book about the future of business in the Internet Age. Looking at the hardcover I found myself figuratively scratching my head. I could not understand why an expert would choose an aging form factor to describe the capabilities of an emerging medium. I was asking myself, “Why does this guy fail to structure the ‘book’ in a way that uses the medium itself to demonstrate the new applications he wants to promote?” Put another way, “Doesn’t a conventional book on such a topic unintentionally message the reader to ‘do as I say; not as I do’?” Read more…
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Reference Books Are Becoming Obsolete
Posted on December 8, 2007
The For Dummies books are becoming obsolete. Admittedly, titles like Classical Music for Idiots or Greek Mythology for Dummies won’t be affected. However, for titles relating to computers and the Internet a conventional book simply won’t do. Instead a multimedia publication, with embedded instructional videos, is likely to become the future standard. Read more…
Filed Under Podcast Video | 4 Comments
