"Even in the shadow of the environmental studies shelves - which groan under the weight of titles giving the expert synthesis on everything from arsenic pollution to climate change - I shudder to think of the potential for harm. For, like Christmas, this first-time feeding frenzy at the bookshop will be short-lived. Soon the returns will begin flowing back to the publishers, vanload after vanload of unwanted stock hauled off to become a vast reservoir of fodder for the pulping machines," he wrote.  Click here to read the full article, reproduced courtesy of the author and The Times Higher.

 

Too posh to publish?

That common leveller, the internet, dictates that the publishing game, as we knew it in the 20th century, is over. Copyright protection, like it or not, will eventually go, just as the Net Book Agreement did. Second-hand books will sell in increasing quantities and the buyers on eBay and Amazon won't give a damn whether or not the publisher and author lose out. It's goodbye to all that. The web appeals to the many who question why publishing houses should be the gatekeepers of information. We're all publishers now, or at least we can be.  Click here to read the article by Colin Walsh in The Author, the magazine of the Society of Authors.

A miss hit
Companies should wake up to the new economics of the internet, and think abundance, not shortage.  The internet is changing the entertainment business from one that is driven by hits to one that will make most of its money from misses. This is good news for consumers, because it means more choice, and we all like things that will never make the best-seller lists for CDs, books or movies. And although it might sound strange, this "new economics of abundance" is already the basis of the net's most successful companies, such as Amazon, eBay and Google.  Click on this link to read the story by Jack Schofield in The Guardian, 24th March 2005

M6 Toll Road built with pulped fiction
Old copies of novels are being used to help prolong the life of the UK's newest road.  It has emerged that about 2,500,000 of the books were acquired during construction of the M6 Toll.  The novels were pulped at a recycling firm in south Wales and used in the preparation of the top layer of the West Midlands motorway, according to building materials suppliers Tarmac.   Click on link to read more:  BBC News, 18th December 2003.

University dumps rare books
In his satire about a library, The Battle of the Books, Jonathan Swift recounts that "a restless spirit haunts over every book till dust or worms have seized upon it."  More than 300 years later, the library at a London university is having its own battle with accusations of "book-burning" and "sacrilege" flying through the air.   Click on link to read more:  Duncan Campbell in The Guardian, 18th June 2005

Publishing makes shift to digital
According to a study commissioned by the British Library, 90% of newly published work will be available digitally by this time.   Only half of this will also be available in print form, with just 10% of new titles available only in print.  It represents a "seismic shift" in the world of publishing said British Library chief executive Lynne Brindley.   Click here to read the full story.