Have you followed – and realized – that Google will now make available some 5 million titles as ebooks – and only half of them are in English! This will make Google rather sooner than later, the by far leading aggregator of digital books. Read more in my first blog entry at the Tools of [...]

The CEO panel debate at the Frankfurt Book Fair is hosting leaders of this transformation, to discuss the transformation of the industry, and its future perspectives as they are shaped by their companies. Wednesday October 10, 2012, from 14:30 to 16:00 Hall 4.2, room Dimension. Speakers: • Santiago de la Mora, Director, Print Content Partnerships, [...]

Virtually all the big ancient libraries have been destroyed – Alexandria, Xi’an, Cordoba – yet not by new technologies but deliberately by military power. What does this teach us about today’s controversy on new digital libraries? (in German only) Fast alle der groĂźen alten Bibliotheken wurden zerstört – aber nicht durch neue Formen und Technologien [...]

With the enthusiasm and the energy we are so fond of, and thanks to a hint from Sabina, we found and hereby proudly present THE solution for all those who regret that with e-Books, book sniffing may come to an end: Tested with all available e-Book formats, comes in 5 flavors, with attractive (yet a [...]

Following the controversy around the Google Settlement and European publishers’ and author (and collecting) societies, one could assume to witness a battle between a bunch of European Jedi knights against that Dark Vader from Mountain View, California. From a more detached reader’s point of view, things are clearly more complex. While Google chose to digitize [...]

With the debate on the Google Settlement and its likely meaning for various groups (and countries) turning into a strange confrontation of hidden interests and pure ideology in some places, notably in Europe, I want to invite anybody interested in the matter to check out this site and the possibilities for a meaningful and differenciated [...]

Is our culture threatened by Google and by the Open Access movement for freely accessible science publications? Are Google’s library scanning programs and the so called “Google settlement” with the US Author’s Guild a menace against the freedom of expression in Germany? Such is the opinion expressed by the “Heidelberg Appell” made public by Roland [...]

Es ist bemerkenswert, dass all die heiß umstrittenen Themen in der aktuellen Debatte rund ums Buch – seine kulturelle Stellung als Kulturgut, das Urheberrecht, die Rolle der Verlage und des Handels – in so gut wie allen gängigen Standarddefinitionen des Buches seit dem 19. Jahrhundert nicht einmal angesprochen werden. Und viele kolportierte Thesen über Trends [...]

The wonderful journal “Logos” has published a tink piece I wrote on the “future of the book” or, more precisely, on what e-Books and digitization may have changed – or not changed at all – about books: What is a book? And, what’s really in it? These two simple questions are getting both more complicated [...]

Tracking news about how the crisis affects publishing over the past two months produces some strange findings. Almost instantly, starting as of  November 2008, we saw predictions about how the crisis would hit the industry. Then in December – and now again, with the year’s end reporting – we are told that notably in the [...]