Since its founding in 1982, OBS has been a thought leader and an innovator in the digital publishing space. The pace continues, 32 years later: OBS president and founder Laura Fillmore will be presenting on Agile Methodology and Change Management this November at the 12th International Conference on Books, Publishing, and Libraries. Agile methodology started →
From October 8-12, OBS president Laura Fillmore will be attending the Frankfurt Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany. A major conference in the publishing industry, last year’s Fair hosted over 7,000 exhibitors from over 100 nations; more than 9,000 journalists; and hundreds of thousands of visitors. One of the hot topics at this year’s Fair is →
Ever stop to wonder what’s behind the current Yoga craze? It seems like the number of practitioners has been growing by some 20% a year in the USA; “Statistics Brain” tells us that $27 billion was spent on Yoga products in the USA alone in the last year. It might be interesting to correlate the →
These days, with the ubiquity of mobile devices, it seems like we are living inside a kind of Memex. First envisioned by technology pioneer Vannevar Bush after World War II, a Memex is “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications and which is mechanized so that it may be →
In our rapidly evolving technology environment, the agile approach to proprietary software development can yield great results for publishers. As with most technology projects, the single greatest challenge to this radical approach remains the people and politics (the wetware) involved, not the software technology itself. This challenge involves not only everyone understanding, but capitalizing on the →
Earlier this month the Apple iBookstore launched Breakout Books, a new category of the online store which features self- and independently-published books. Although the iBookstore has always accepted self-published titles, Breakout Books highlights the increasing market share of the independent author and gives added support in terms of marketing and promotion. To give an idea of →
The proliferation of e-content has opened up a world unlike anything seen in traditional publishing. One company, Total BooX, has created a truly innovative business model, allowing you access to ebooks for free, and only charging you for the content you actually read. It’s an app for tablets and mobile devices, allowing you to browse books, →
There’s no question that the publishing industry is evolving rapidly. New technology companies spring up daily providing the latest technologies – tablets, e-readers, smartphones – as well as publishing services like file conversion and optimization. But in the frenzy to ensure their content is as widely available as possible without incurring prohibitive setup and/or conversion →
Just in time for London Book Fair, OBS is celebrating the launch of our new e-distribution portal, ProtoBooks: Your one-stop shop for both print and ebooks. For publishers, ProtoBooks is a fast and secure way to get your books to the global market in a variety of formats: Subscription-based online access; Cloud-stored Flash-based ebooks; Downloads for offline →
Global Industry Analysts, Inc. (GIA) released a global outlook report on the publishing industry last month, predicting that it will reach $322.7 billion by 2015. This news comes following an unstable point brought on by the global economic recession, but shows that the industry should recover in the coming years. Dropping book sales, fewer new titles, →