The Revolution Will Be Printed – Why A Book and Not A Blog - Mike Walsh, Futuretainment

The first question my publisher asked me was why a book and not a blog? Three years ago when I started working on Futuretainment, that was already a tough question to answer. With eBooks now on the crest of critical mass, it hasn’t got any easier. Last week, my book hit the shelves. Although you can buy it on Amazon, you can’t read it on a Kindle. In fact, with 300 pages of illustrations, original photographs and custom designed typography – it is about as Kindle friendly as a bathtub. That was a deliberate decision on my part, but it comes at a time when the very concept of a book is changing.

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MicroPayments - Why Small Payments Won’t Save Publishers « Clay Shirky

With continued turmoil in the advertising market, people who work at newspapers and magazines are wondering if micropayments will save them, with recent speculation in this direction by David Sarno of the LA Times, David Carr of the NY Times, and Walter Isaacson in Time magazine. Unfortunately for the optimists, micropayments — small payments made by readers for individual articles or other pieces of a la carte content — won’t work for online journalism. To understand why not, there are two key pieces of background.

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Content is No Longer King

Stephen Shapiro is a business writer who has earnt a living in the traditional manner associated with consultants. He has written two books to support his innovation consultancy. No difference to the norm here! However his blog "Content is No Longer King" is about his journey of discovery seeking to understand who makes profits from his writing now Amazon's Kindle threatens to revolutionise book publishing and distribution by taking his books on-line. Shapiro demonstrates clearly in this article that we are repeating the business models of old - business models stretching back to the turn of the 20th century to the Tin Pan Alley days when popular sheet music was first introduced to the masses. The profit takers in those days were the entrepreneur distributors who travelled door to door selling the sheet music - not the songwriters. The only difference now is the distribution method rather than being human is on-line and once it gets on-line there is almost no cost to the distributor!!

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CLF appoints Grant Crossley as CEO

The Creative Leadership Forum has appointed Grant Crossley as chief executive officer. Grant brings extensive knowledge in the fields of innovation and creativity along with a significant database of contacts. We look forward to learning from his experience.

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