Editorial Integrity and the Sponsorship Model
Some online publishers searching for alternative business models to the traditional one, where the readers pay for content, arrive at the sponsorship and advertising models, where private interests pay...
View ArticleWhy Does PI Matter?
In light of all the flurry of activity these days around the (re)selling of intangible digits, we might be wise to re-think the focus of our predominant, copy-based business model. In an economy of...
View ArticleOM or ADD?
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...
View ArticleWhat’s Old is New: Mandela Lives On in OBS Archives
At first glance, the OBS Archives Site appears to be an outdated list of hyperlinks with layout and formatting reminiscent of the early 1990s. At that time, Mosaic browsers and hyperlinks were...
View Article20 Years Later: OBS, Innovation, and the Frankfurt Book Fair
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...
View ArticleOBS President to Present at the 12th International Conference on Books,...
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...
View ArticleYesterday’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...
View Article< SIGH > There Goes My Job… Or Not
OBS once built a zesty Web interface for a school that enabled students to drop, click, aggregate, and otherwise customize and combine web-based content with their own. The system automated workflow...
View Article“Online Publishing: Threat or Menace?” Redux
OBS founder and president Laura Fillmore recently revisited and updated this article she wrote over 20 years ago for The Journal of Electronic Publishing, and she would like to thank Editor Maria Bonn...
View ArticleProcess Veritas: Need for Standards in Editorial/Production Workflows
How does a reader know that the text in hand or on screen contains true information? Back when I started my publishing career at Little, Brown/Trade Editorial in 1976, many independent publishing...
View ArticleOne World-Wide Webification
The big news to come out of BookExpo America (BEA) in Chicago this month is the early sounds of a merger of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), managers of the publishing industry’s EPUB...
View ArticlePublishing Standards in an Open Source World: The W3C / IDPF Merger
On February 1, 2017, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) officially announced its merger with the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), stating in a press release that “the vision to align...
View ArticleJohn 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...
View ArticleAgile 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...
View ArticleNet 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...
View ArticleBezos 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....
View ArticleForeign Rights: “Sub” Rights No More
Back in the Paleolithic Age of Paper, information moved slowly. Slow like the Glyptodon. Books took nine months to gestate from manuscript to print. For content to reach readers beyond the market of...
View ArticleBEA 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...
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