I’ll give money to save libraries, ex-Waterstones boss pledges
Tim Coates, a British entrepreneur has pledged to support libraries facing budget cuts with profits from his new ebook company. He and his company will launch the Bilbary ebook site in America this week and in Britain next month. Mr Coates is promoting his website “as a rival to Amazon and Apple’s ebook retail operations.” It will go live in Britain next month. While a supporter of libraries, Mr. Coates is highly critical of how they are managed in the UK. “Someone needs to show leadership… The situation is dreadful and getting worse.” (watch for an interview with Tim Coates in an upcoming issue of Against the Grain.)
This article in one of a series that reports on “the energized Publishing Business Conference and Expo” recently held in New York. In her own version of accentuating the positive, Book Business’ Editorial Director Noelle Skodzinski kicked thing off by reminding the audience “that publishing is not dead, change is okay, and that the future is alive with new opportunities in our pursuit of continued success and excellence in the publishing business.” In fact, all of the keynoters in this 2 day conference insisted that there continuing opportunities “for publisher who provide what distributors and readers still need—curating, organizing and delivering content; allocating investment resources; and managing the business side of bringing author and reader together.”
The article also focuses on this conference as being a place where print technologies have a place along side their digital counterparts. From the presence on the exhibit floor of major book manufacturers like Quad/Graphics and Thomson Reuters to discussions of the nuts and bolts of taking content born digital in to print production there is emphasis on “requirements of both print and digital multi-platform production.”
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