Robots Go To Journalism School

In science fiction, robots make lightning fast calculations and have superhuman strength. From “Forbidden Planet” to “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the robots of cinema have played a wide range of roles – as friends and as enemies to humankind. But...

The Wheels of the Amazon Bus Go Round

If the book business were a big yellow school bus, the driver would be a bald fellow wearing a wide grin. More even than before, Jeff Bezos and Amazon have the wheel, while publishers and authors hang on for a rough ride. In particular, speculation about the end game...

Ending World War Copyright

The creative industries – and the technology companies that carry their content – may share a common customer, but little else. Where it comes to copyright law, their differences have often flared into open war. Technology companies dream of rewriting copyright law to...

Amazon A Busy Negotiator

When Les Moonves, President and CEO of CBS Corporation, the owners of Simon & Schuster, let slip that the Big 5 house was in pricing talks with Amazon, the media world did its best to react with shock. Any expression of surprise, however, could only have been for...

Copyright and the Aereo Decision

In one corner stood the leading US television broadcast companies together; and in the other opposite corner facing them alone was Aereo, a well-funded startup company that was offering paid subscribers the ability to watch broadcast television in almost-real time...

Amazon To Authors – Take The Whole Enchilada

The offer sounded almost too good to be true, but the reports on Tuesday were from reliable sources. Caught in a publicity fire-fight with Hachette Book Group authors and publishers, Amazon appealed to one of the parties for peace. The online shopping giant had...

When Authors Rule

In 2014, the author has ascended the throne of scientific and scholarly publishing. With the rise of Open Access business models, authors today are much more than a source of content — they’ve become paying customers! It’s time publishers understand what...

Best of BTB: The “New” Agents

For the book business in 2014, everything is new – for proof, turn to the news media, which breathlessly covers the breaking stories as if filing dispatches from a war. Self-publishing particularly receives attention, and is often pitched as a David and Goliath tale....