OBS

OBS Response to COVID-19

Rockport, Massachusetts, March 13, 2020 – Open Book Systems, Inc. continues to monitor the COVID-19 situation closely and is taking appropriate measures to ensure the health and safety of our employees and their families, as well as continuing to offer uninterrupted service to our customers. Since Tuesday, March 10, our staff and vendors are working

BEA Retrospective : Bounteous to Unbound

BEA has always been the book industry’s main show of the year in the US, when publishers release their Fall lists to the bookstores and libraries, offering advanced peeks at exciting new books in the form of readings, advance galleys, and author breakfasts. Vendors to the trade used to enjoy a major presence at the

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,

John Ashbery: In Memoriam

Poet John Ashbery died this past Sunday, stilling a genius voice whose insight and humor truly broke through to the other side. My husband introduced me to him in the 1970s. We read Houseboat Days aloud and laughed together at “The Serious Doll.”  We were delighted when Ashbery accepted our invitation to come and give

Yesterday’s Business: Managed Hosting

In the early days of the Internet, OBS used to not only design and develop internet solutions for publishers, but we also served as a managed host for the custom applications we built – keeping the system software environment and the applications updated, secure, and otherwise supported (customer and client support included!), all running behind

A Look Back on OBS

We saw the e-wave coming over thirty years ago and are working today to help publishers adapt to and profit from new internet-based publishing opportunities. Read the below excerpt from a “What’s New” OBS posted over ten years ago; you will see that OBS has a strong working knowledge not only of the traditional publishing