On the occasion of its 20th birthday, The Bookseller would like to wish Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos many happy returns. Amazon is a remarkable business led by a remarkable visionary. My colleague at The Bookseller, Philip Jones is right — party hats: on. In his leader piece for today’s edition of the magazine on… Read More
Gaming the system: Amazon at home and abroad
The special symmetry of ‘the disrupter that demands to be undisrupted’ As Friday’s edition of The Bookseller points out, last week brought Amazon’s place in European markets into tighter focus. A scene-setting article from my colleague Lisa Campbell announced the European Commission’s formal antitrust investigation into the retailer’s relationships with publishers and ebook distribution. Campbell also pointed to… Read More
George Berkowski's FutureBook Conference podium warmer
The Bookseller’s The FutureBook 2014 Conference programme on 14th November promises to have the widest scope and most inquisitive bent yet, in terms of signalling digital directions ahead. Keynote commentary will come from not only from author and entrepreneur George Berkowski, but also from WGSN’s Carla Buzasi, and — in conversation with Philip Jones — Penguin Random House’s Tom… Read More
At Frankfurt Book Fair: Where's Amazon?
My first sea journey was on the Cunard liner, the HMS Queen Elizabeth.Not the QEII, but her predecessor — longer than the HMS Queen Mary by 11 feet, I loved telling my friends. And as my family drove along the dock in France to reach the ship, I noticed a vast, dark brown wall beside us…thought nothing of it…some big warehouse… Read More
Seattle's Finest: Jon Fine Is Leaving Amazon
The Face Of The Company’s Publishing Platforms To Thousands After almost nine years at Amazon, I am sorry to announce that Jon Fine has decided to leave the company at the end of the year. When he wrote the internal memo that told the Amazon workforce of Jon Fine’s impending departure, Charles Kronbach, may have had the same… Read More
'Retail stonewalling' and Amazon sightings in bookstores
Oil and water…The general pattern, of course, has been simple: many bookshops, objecting to Amazon’s effects on the industry, have declined to carry books from Amazon Publishing imprints. A kind of major-player blessing on independent stores has been provided by Barnes & Noble’s corporate stance, announced January 2012, against Amazon Publishing books. So frustrated with the situation was Amazon… Read More
Publishing's Future: When Editors Eat Robots
The Quantified Self Of Richard Nash He is a podium prowler. He moves around during a conference presentation. He sets up gazelle-graceful concepts and wounds them quickly, before you get too comfortable. Lots of articulate gestures. Give him two flashlights and he could land a Dreamliner onstage as he talked. And his talks? They tend to work like… Read More