As I close out the year and wish everyone best wishes for the new year, I have compiled a summary of what I think were my more interesting posts. Frequent visitors will have read these. As always, thanks for your support and tell your friends to come visit and subscribe.
In Death of The Big Box (December) I thought about how long-term macro changes that emanate out of the current economic crisis will impact the retail channel. I speculate how these changes will impact the sale and merchandising of books. This week I read an article about the near bankruptcy of the second largest mall operator in the US and an article about how shoppers are flocking to on-line discount coupon sites. The web is easier and there is no going back.
On the theme of print to web transformations and migrations, I had several posts most recently the questionably titled Pimp My Print (December and my favorite for title of the year) and Generational Chasm (June). If I were to write a book the idea of the generational chasm really interests me. It's not a unique idea I have to say.
As always Amazon was in the news - Amazon The Monopoly (March)- and I noted concern expressed in the market place about their increasing dominance. Amazon was brutal in their exertion of market power in their argument with Hachette UK. Mike Shatzkin picked up the theme in this guest submission Amazon and Book Pricing (April) (He also tackled the question Border's Stickers Books - Why?) Earlier in the year, I had speculated on the budding competition between Amazon and Apple: Amazon Versus Apple: Is this a Cage Fight (January). Apple may have the last laugh with the numbers of iStanza e-Book downloads to the iPhone. We await the next version of the Kindle in 2009.
In keeping with the e-Book theme, I posted thoughts on a possible development of an e-Book mass market channel. Rackjobbing the E-Book (July)
The post that generated the most comment during the year was on Brand Presence (July) where I noted the continued attempt by publishers to organize around branding concepts that remain largely irrelevant to consumers. In a similar vein I thought about the implications of big-name author's defecting from one publisher to another in Defections (February) and a possible Google play.
I had a lot of fun putting together a presentation to the Supply Chain Interests group (October) at Frankfurt this year. I'm not so sure the audience felt the same way.
My post on Massive Data sets (June) suggested that publishers may think differently about all the data collected during the preparation of published research articles, dissertations and other types of data intensive publishing.
Lastly, the post office launched a Frank Sinatra stamp which gave me an opportunity to tell my Frank Sinatra story (May). I am waiting for the Clint Eastwood stamp so I can tell that one. I missed the John Wayne stamp but maybe I'll tell that story one day anyway.
I think that's enough. I wonder what 2009 will bring? All my predictions of 2008 (January) where basically wrong but maybe I can do better this time around?
Update:
I have created a pdf of all the posts that is available here.
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