Over the past couple of decades education publishing has been characterized by waves of consolidation into a handful of giant conglomerates. This is a typical pattern in an industry as products commoditize. If products are effectively interchangeable (commodities) competitors gain competitive advantage through industrial scale cost management (economies of scale).…
An understatement – education publishing is changing. Heck, publishing writ large (trade books, music, movies, news, etc.) is shifting in dramatic and unpredictable ways. Textbooks are one of the last little corners of the intellectual property world to enter this new era. Today’s post is a teaser for a longer…
50% of the men did not wear neck ties at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Traditional publishers are struggling with appropriate responses to digital transformation and aping the casual style of Silicon Valley seems to be popular. Interesting fact – if you wear a suit without a tie you still…
In discussing the potential for ads in e-books – the latest hail mary pass of traditional media – Paul Carr at TechCrunch dropped this gem: It’s a compelling argument, but like so many compelling arguments made about the future of books, it’s also hampered by consisting almost entirely of bullshit.…
This is creative thinking at work. How do you arrest someone for cleaning a tunnel – even if it looks like graffiti? I imagine the call to Police HQ was pretty amusing and resulted in a lot of head scratching. It often takes explicit subversion of our preconceptions to reveal…
Common Core Standards (CCS) will have a profound impact on the instructional materials market. The big players like Pearson and McGraw-Hill are on-board as endorsing partners, but smaller supplemental publishers have as much (if not more) to gain if the initiative is successful. Common standards will reduce structural barriers to…
My take away from the first day of the Association of Education Publisher’s Content in Context Conference (#ciccon): educators have always needed Education Publishers, but they have never particularly wanted them. What are you doing at your company to remain necessary in the digital age?
OK – admit it, trade shows are fun. Sometimes traveling to a distant city, circulating with your peers, and dining out on the company can be a kick. You are learning too – about competitors and about your customers. The deadlines around a trade show can produce drama and tension,…
At PCI we are putting the finishing touches on our 2010 budget. The Stimulus funds are creating a particular challenge as we look out over the next 12-24 months. On the one hand there should be plenty of new money in the market next year. On the other, despite ARRA…
Vast is too small a word to describe the Frankfurt Book Fair. Spread over several buildings – each the size of a normal convention center – one can find everything related to publishing in the world. It’s literally literature. We attended this year because education publishing, a business with deep…