Ken Auletta Writes on the DOJ Lawsuit

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

People/businesses can always find excuses to NOT change their old ways of doing things, including blaming everything/one else for the fact that they don't want to change.

Exactly the point and one that many have raised before.

Amazon is more than the elephant in the room to the big publishing houses, much more. Amazon is the perfect company to blame in order to create a smoke screen to cover up all the manifest failings of the BPH's to bring their anachronistic business practices into the 21st century.

Apple provided the perfect lifeline when offering up the concept that evolved into the agency model. Control could be maintained.

Desperate rearguard actions indeed.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

EBSCOhost MasterFilePremier, subscribed to by the public libraries around here, seems a few days away from releasing the full text of the June 25 issue which has this article. The latest they have up is June 18. What is the service that Seattle subscribes to?

General Reference Center Gold from Gale (Cenage Learning).

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

General Reference Center Gold from Gale (Cenage Learning).

Thanks to Fbone and yourself.

Ken Auletta's article is terrific. I suppose it was ironic that I read it for free (free to me, but paid for by the library) on my Kindle.

I never have read any of Auletta's books, but I will now.

Since 1970 or so, we have been in a golden age of great heavily researched non-fiction. If Ken Auletta and Mike Shatzkin, who I now respect enormously, are right, this age will end. But the backlist will endure. OK for me. Better for crooked politicians who will have just a little less to worry about. Not so good, I think, for authors, or the country.

Not emphasized enough in these articles is the gulf in the interests of readers who like research based books (mostly, not totally, means non-fiction) and those who prefer works of pure imagination. In the latter case, a lot of the books still need a pushy agent and heavy professional editing to get finished and polished. But there always will be a supply of self-starting fiction authors who can do well with light editing. Anthony Trollope, one of my favorites, wrote some of this best classics with only his wife's help. But without a lot more help than that, non-fiction gets thinly researched and sloppy.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Thanks to Fbone and yourself.

You're welcome.

This got me to thinking about magazines. I wonder when these publishers will put a halt to the ready availability of free magazines through libraries and condensed offerings from their websites and aggregators like Pulse and Flipboard?

Why pay for a subscription to Consumer Reports when you can get full online access from the library?

Pulse provides all the magazine experience I need. Therefore, I don't have to pay for subscriptions. What say you to that, Mr magazine publisher?

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I wonder when these publishers will put a halt to the ready availability of free magazines through libraries and condensed offerings from their websites and aggregators like Pulse and Flipboard?

Coincidentally, this came out three days ago:

Wired and The New Yorker are suspending efforts to sell ads on the platform and replacing their robust Flipboard feeds next month with spartan versions that summon their own websites if readers want whole articles.

Why pay for a subscription to Consumer Reports when you can get full online access from the library?

While I use the library periodical services, I find them a far harder-to-use source of Kindle reading matter than Overdrive for books.

Recent find worth the trouble: "My Friend Matt," Commentary, June 2012. It's written by Joseph Epstein, who deserves to be published in a much better magazine.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

You're welcome.

This got me to thinking about magazines. I wonder when these publishers will put a halt to the ready availability of free magazines through libraries and condensed offerings from their websites and aggregators like Pulse and Flipboard?

Why pay for a subscription to Consumer Reports when you can get full online access from the library?

Pulse provides all the magazine experience I need. Therefore, I don't have to pay for subscriptions. What say you to that, Mr magazine publisher?

Already happening. Many paywalls out there.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

You're welcome.

This got me to thinking about magazines. I wonder when these publishers will put a halt to the ready availability of free magazines through libraries and condensed offerings from their websites and aggregators like Pulse and Flipboard?

Why pay for a subscription to Consumer Reports when you can get full online access from the library?

Pulse provides all the magazine experience I need. Therefore, I don't have to pay for subscriptions. What say you to that, Mr magazine publisher?

Pulse is planning to move to a model where it offers free and premium ( paid for ) channels. In the end, I think both Pulse and Flipboard are going to move to a " metered subscription " model where you read a certain amount for free then " upgrade" to read the rest. Hey, it works for the gaming industry, where they call it the " freemium" model. The NYT has a version of this too.