I have a friend who is a 10. He takes a dim view of another friend, who is a 3. The 10 sees 3 as limited in outlook and perhaps not possessing “real” intelligence. The 3, on the other hand, sees the 10 as incorrigibly impractical. The 10 just doesn’t see what is actually going …

Joseph J. Esposito is president of Processed Media, an independent management consultancy providing strategic advice, operating analysis, and interim management in the area of digital media to publishing and software companies in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors. He writes extensively on digital media and has been awarded research grants from the Hewlett, MacArthur, and Mellon …

Looking in on the fringes of the digital publishing world, you would get the impression that publishing is dead, dead, dead, except for those among us—the living dead—in denial. You have heard these claims or charges before. Big publishers are too big and unresponsive; publishers don’t add value; all information should be open (as in …

Yes, the title is tongue in cheek. What I’m about to do is share some thoughts not on where publishing is going but on where it will go after it gets there. The point of this exercise is to caution us about thinking that we have somehow or other figured out the future of publishing …

“I’m usually the one wearing the target on my chest.” The speaker was an Amazon executive. The setting was a meeting of publishers and booksellers confronting troublesome issues. The time was some years ago. But it’s easy to imagine the same scene playing out today as people throughout the book business express anger at Amazon …