“We’re from Kodak, Apple, Google, Yahoo”: The Guardian profiles Blurb — a publishing company with nobody from mainstream publishing — that specialises in high-quality, print-on-demand, photography books. Very, very, cool.
Good news and bad news for online retailers: Statcan found that more Canadians are shopping on the internet, placing almost $12.8 billion worth of orders in 2007, up 61% from 2005. ComScore, on the other hand, have just released their monthly retail e-commerce sales estimates, showing that online spending in October 2008 grew by only 1 percent over October 2007–the lowest monthly growth rate since they began tracking e-commerce in 2001.
Victor & Susie: A brightly coloured “children’s book for adults” about Susie and Victor the snail, all drawn with letters and punctuation marks, published by Brighten The Corners (pictured). (via drawn)
“A kind of slow-motion suicide”: David Carr’s column for the New York Times looks at why firing their the most talented, experienced employees to cut costs backfired for Circuit City and will do the same for newspapers too:
“Right now, the consumer has all manner of text to choose from on platforms that range from a cellphone to broadsheet. The critical point of difference journalism offers is that it can reduce the signal-to-noise ratio and provide trusted, branded information. That will be a business into the future, perhaps less paper-bound and smaller, but a very real business.”
My take on this for book publishers (as it normally is): Publish less, publish better — quality matters. (via reveries)