During these strange times many people in the book industry have one earnest desire, and that is to return to normality or something akin to daily life before COVID19. Although the government is taking steps to lift restrictions on business and leisure activities, we should be honest enough to recognise that normality as we knew…
Last week I posted some of my notes from a panel discussion on the subject of Building a relevant book industry for the future: Diversity, Content and Data at the BIC New Trends in Publishing seminar. Below is the second installment in this series of three blogs. New roles and new skills Q: Despite how the industry…
Earlier this month, I was invited to join a panel discussion on the subject of Building a relevant book industry for the future: Diversity, Content and Data at the BIC New Trends in Publishing seminar. The panel was moderated by Karina Luke, Executive Director at BIC and I sat alongside three excellent expert panellists, Sheila Lambie, Senior…
‘Anyway, those tickets, the old ones, they didn’t tell you where you were going, much less where you came from. He couldn’t remember seeing any dates on them either, and there was certainly no mention of time. It was all different now, of course. All this information. Archie wondered why this was’. White Teeth by…
It may seem a strange question to ask, but it reared its head at a meeting of our digital supply chain group this week. There’s little doubt that, despite digitisation, extensive licensing of content and the resulting massive increases in digital sales, our industry still hasn’t begun to concentrate on how it can be made…
The news that 34 organisations now hold e4libraries accreditation may not sound much but, in a year when most of the news about libraries has been bad, it has been very encouraging that progress has been made in so many places in cutting costs and improving library users’ experiences. The e4libraries campaign has been based…
The last six months have seen a sea change in the publishing world’s attitudes to digital products. That’s not to say that e-books and digital delivery have in any way lost their momentum: sales continue to grow; new devices are launched; and new platforms and opportunities go on emerging. But much of the hype has…
BIC spent the better part of a decade working out the detail of the Industry Returns Initiative proposed by KPMG in the late 90s; and with OUP adopting it a month or so ago it has now probably gone about as far as it is going towards a universal UK standard. Although implementation was much…
The end of the holiday season is a good time to take stock; and maybe to cast a fresh eye over the book industry scene. For BIC, it means the opportunity to reassess priorities. There are signs that the hype around digital may be dying down. That would be a good thing, provided that the…