Rupert knows the ad model of publishing is doomed. Print and broadcast command the heftiest premiums, and both are at risk of price and volume erosion as consumers cut their ties to offline media. (more…)

Data that we collected for the titles O’Reilly put out showed a net lift in sales for books that had been pirated. So, it actually spurred, not hurt, sales.

via Jenn Webb, Book piracy: Less DRM, more data – O’Reilly Radar.

Byrne’s solution [...] is to create the role of a digital producer who resides in editorial but acts as a liaison between development and editorial. Keeping the job editorially focused is important because the technical side lacks an overarching understanding of all the moving parts, such as how editorial works with the business side[.]

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Good content isn’t fake. It doesn’t make promises that it can’t keep. It’s human and honest. It has a personality and a point of view. It’s intrinsically social. That’s why it engages us. That’s why we follow or like your brand.

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[T]he scenario I foresee:

1. Major online video providers (Netflix, Amazon, Vimeo, Major League Baseball, etc.) already have invested in H.264, both technically and legally.
2. These providers, right now, today, send H.264-encoded video in one of two ways: directly, to clients with native H.264 playback; and wrapped in Flash, for web browsers with Flash Player installed.

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“We basically have two kinds of readers that visit the site: native readers and nomadic readers. Natives come to you because you’re you; nomadic readers are coming in from other communities or search traffic.” Welcome mats are an attempt to do what every news organization hopes to: to convert some of the nomads into natives.

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People who don’t have a photographic memory are going to forget who’s who or what’s what. In the digital context, you can easily help people with that; but if you’re anything like me, you tend to follow a link to learn more about a subject, and then you end following this interesting trail that never leads you back to what you were originally reading. (more…)