Publishing and Politics

US CDC Guidelines on Reopening

May 5, 2020 OBS posts these CDC guidelines as a public service, as Massachusetts and other states and localities consider reopening their economies while COVID-19 remains at large in our communities. CDC submitted to White House (downloaded from San Jose Mercury News) Interim Guidance for Child Care Programs The reopening of child care programs is

OBS at Frankfurt Book Fair 2019

OBS is back again at the Frankfurt Book Fair again this October, ready to hit the ground running, exploring, and discovering digital publishing innovations and ideas for our clients and partners. One exciting initiative we are exploring is how blockchain networks can be put to use to update and streamline traditional publishing processes. The combination

A Vanishing World Made Permanent through Publishing

Anne C. Wyman, once the Boston Globe’s first full-time travel writer and long-time editorial page editor, in 2010 asked OBS’s Protean Press to publish her book “Kiping’s Cat: A Memoir of my Father.” Over the years, this publishing project grew into four Wyman books, two of them posthumous publications by Anne’s father himself, Jeffries Wyman.

Trade Duty: Publishing What Ought to be Read

Many decision points contribute to a trade editor’s GO/NO GO final opinion. A bestseller will generate revenue to keep the doors open and the firm able to further its mission. A mid-list winner fills an ongoing content need and will keep selling and selling, slow and steady. In these POD days, when the words “out

The Phone, Mightier than the Sword

As things speed up to such an extent that there remains no time any more to muse, ponder, discuss, cogitate, and write things down, the old adage that the pen is mightier than the sword appears to be morphing into “the phone is mightier than the sword.” Witness the recent rise of live streaming as

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

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