Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing by John B. Thompson
I was only able to find a paper copy of this book on the digital revolution in book publishing. The author his plenty of knowledge on the topic. Alas, the book is very repetitive. (The last two chapters both rehashed the same topics that had been previously discussed earlier.) The most interesting parts are the detailed company case studies. The author provides detailed case studies for various start ups and their approaches. The digital revolution has changed the way books are written, produced and distributed. It has enabled crowdfunding, publishing on demand and self-publishing. Audiobooks have also exploded in popularity. Amazon has established a dominant position as a seller of physical books, audiobooks and ebooks. It also had detailed knowledge on customers and their preferences. Inkshares, Unbound, Smashwords and Wattpad are all explored in the book. However, since this book was written in 2021, Unbound has gone bellyup and not paid it's authors. Smashwords has been acquired by Draft2Digital. Does leave Amazon as the best self publishing route? Ebooks rose significantly in popularity and then leveled off. What will the future be? Will paper books continue to last a long time? The book was written before the rise of AI. How will this impact publishing? Will it be even more difficult to get through the noise?
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