Author Archives: OBS

Selling “Book Futures” Using Blockchain

We are beginning to experiment with two book projects that leverage blockchain technology to track users’ ownership of ebooks. We were attracted to the blockchain because it appears to address issues fundamental to the publishing industry — such as, for example, what it means to “own” a digital object like an ebook — while also moving us

Blockchain in Publishing: The Simultaneity of Becoming

When a publication gets empowered by blockchain technology, one can truly say that a reader never steps into the same book twice. Blockchain enables internet-published content to emulate life itself — both the perceived (the content), and the perceivers (publishers and readers) — in a recorded environment that captures and publishes a constant state of content

Cyberspace Radio Talk from 1996

“The Connection” NPR Host Christopher Lydon, MIT Media Lab Music Professor Tod Machover, and Laura Fillmore, President of the Online BookStore (OBS) explore the future of arts on the net in this radio show — Karaoke books, interactive opera, hyper books and instruments. We began to travel down thought trails leading into the new frontier, a

Bezos Started Amazon Based on Math Error

Before Amazon, there was the Online BookStore (OBS), now Open Book Systems (OBS). We maintained a list of all the publishers who had online presences; it took up about half a computer screen in 1994. Before starting the Online BookStore, our company packaged books for publishers, one of which was John Quarterman’s The Matrix (Digital Press,

Freedom of the Press: The Front Line

OBS applauds Macmillan Publishers for actively defending our First Amendment rights in publishing Michael Woolf’s controversial book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.” Rather than bowing to White House demands that Macmillan cease and desist from publishing the book, which offers insights into the current administration’s White House, Macmillan subsidiary Henry Holt and Co. pushed

Net Neutrality: It’s Not Over Yet!

This past Saturday Senator Elizabeth Warren visited Cape Ann, where OBS is headquartered, for an inspiring town hall with 800 citizens. OBS president Laura Fillmore was the first to ask a question of the Senator, and, fittingly, the internet pioneer asked about the FCC’s December 14 decision to eliminate Net Neutrality, basically turning the free and open

What’s Old is New: Excerpts from Meme Machinery 101

Meme Machinery 101: The Evolution of a University Press Marketplace” by Laura Fillmore President, Open Book Systems (OBS) Presented to AAUP Annual Meeting at Snowbird May 24, 1996 Excerpted from http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/papers/mememach.htm Copyright © 1996 by Laura Fillmore; written permission required to reprint. Coming back to the Wasatch mountains at Snowbird is a welcome pilgrimage for

Agile Hands in the Machine

As we trek along in the Human Machine Interface (HMI) – driving, texting, reading, recording – we inform our electronic environment, enabling it to grow smarter as it records our thought paths and virtual lives. We allow this thinking machine to sort, separate, sequence, map, aggregate, and otherwise contextualize our digital footprints with billions of others’