A Bloomberg Columnist on How “Books Stubbornly Refused to Be Disrupted, and It Worked”
From a “Bloomberg View” Column by Leonid Bershidsky:
Reading a paper book — or listening to vinyl records, whose remarkable comeback continued last year — is a statement, a human being’s answer to being increasingly surrounded, and now even threatened, by machines.
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Book publishers have kept their paper-based operations and helped their physical distribution networks to stay alive by charging low wholesale prices. They have also maintained a time gap between the paper and digital releases of important books. People seeking a traditional experience have always been able to find it, and they were rewarded for it by being the first to read the industry’s best offerings. The printed book ecosystem survived the tech revolution, and it no longer appears to be in danger from it.
Read the Complete Column (approx. 970 words)
Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Journal Articles, News
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.