Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing

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En parte, se trata de un amplio estudio de éxitos y fracasos de actores -tradicionales y nuevos producto de la revolución digital- de la industria editorial anglosajona. También es un profundo estudio -de al menos dos décadas, del 2000 al 2019- sobre los cambios y tendencias producto del paradigma digital en el ecosistema editorial: Primary influences in the making of the movie were the Beat classic film, Pull My Daisy and other street-level compositions by filmmaker Robert Frank and various works from the New American Cinema. The narration style was adopted from 1930-40’s American gangster and film noir movies, and some Western genre elements were included as well – particularly in the conceptual story component of a “man heading out West to start anew”. Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization by John Robb.If you want to understand the future, read this book. John Robb is one of the greatest living systems thinkers in the world. The name for the kind of warfare John Robb studies is known as 4th Generation Warfare. You can think of him as a modern John Boyd — applying his thinking not to troop warfare or Pentagon politics but to super-empowered individuals, decentralized groups, and economics. I first read this book while researching for a speech Robert Greene (see below) was giving at West Point. I’m not sure any other text has shaped my view of politics and international affairs in the time since.

Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield.It might seem weird to recommend a book of fiction on this list, but smarter people than I — and many actual soldiers — have all raved about the accuracy and poignancy of this book. It is perhaps the clearest and best book written on the 300 Spartans who fought the Persians (and sacrificed themselves) at Thermopylae. The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost by Victor Davis Hanson. This book tells of five different generals, each who came in and saved a war that was otherwise likely to be lost. Those generals are Themistocles, Belisarius, Sherman, Ridgway (in Korea), and Petraeus (in Iraq).The major take-away I gathered from the book: (1) digital platforms are not going to completely replace traditional publication industry, digital books are not going to replace physical books completely, but they introduce new models and competition so that the industry will have to evolve along the way. (2) What is most powerful about the digital platforms are not simply the form of e-books, but their ability to gather a huge amount of user data, with which they can do a ton of things from tailored recommendation to the million-dollar-worthy knowledge about what to adapt into tv or movies. Podcast #939 What Lifting Ancient Stones Can Teach You About Being a Man Podcast #938 Social Skills as the Road to Character Podcast #937 Protein — Everything You Need to Know Podcast #936 Zombies, Minecraft, and Dealing with Uncertainty BookWars Bookwars Directed by Jason Rosette". www.nypress.com. Archived from the original on 6 June 2011 . Retrieved 12 January 2022. Because of the detail and analytics about traditional publishing, this is a book I have already recommended to many eBook-centric and digital-only indie authors looking to understand from across the divide that still exists between traditional publishing and the self-publishing communities. A good mix of the specific timeline of digital publishing histories as well as interesting tidbits about the history of printing, orality and overall written communication

The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian.Arrian gifted us with two amazing documents: one was the lectures of the philosopher Epictetus and the second was his history of the wars of Alexander the Great. Alexander is a wonderful example of the toxic burden of ambition. Yes, it brought him to the edges of the conquered world — but that’s also where he died, likely murdered by his own men. He had no real purpose for it all, no real plan or true empire — it was just fight, win, own, fight, win, own until the end (and in the end, as Epictetus observed, he still died and was buried like the rest of us). I’m not saying there are no other lessons, but this is the most salient one. Other lessons include: leading from the front and the importance of speed, surprise, and boldness. Another great book on Alexander is Steven Pressfield’s The Virtues of War. The mission of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) is to advance scholarly publishing and communication, and the professional development of its members through education, collaboration, and networking. SSP established The Scholarly Kitchen blog in February 2008 to keep SSP members and interested parties aware of new developments in publishing. This could be cut into a third and still deliver its message. Much of the history cited are well-known and unnecessary, like how books were published, oral tradition of stories, founding of tech giants, ebooks, audiobooks, iTunes. A simple line description would suffice. Data is dated, some dead. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.I won’t lie to you, this is a long book. But it tells the history of the epic war between Athens and Sparta — it is geo-politics, it’s strategy, it’s leadership, it’s lessons in grief, rhetoric, and persuasion. From the beautiful and moving words of Pericles’ funeral oration to the cunning and creative tactics of the Spartan general Brasidas, this book has everything. There is also the powerful lesson of Athens’ overreach, which culminated their loss at Syracuse and still has immense implications today. And then there was the ultimate overreach by Sparta, who won the war but had no understanding of how to rule an empire. It’s a must read for any student of the world. (My favorite little tidbit, Thucydides fought in the war, but was apparently disgraced and missed much of it because he caught the plague.) As a follow up, the book A War Like No Other by Victor David Hanson is a good accessible but modern history of the battle. While ebooks were at the heart of many of these conflicts, Thompson argues that the most fundamental consequences lie elsewhere. The print-on-paper book has proven to be a remarkably resilient cultural form, but the digital revolution has transformed the industry in other ways, spawning new players which now wield unprecedented power and giving rise to an array of new publishing forms. Most important of all, it has transformed the broader information and communication environment, creating new challenges and new opportunities for publishers as they seek to redefine their role in the digital age.

A bit repetitive; this is sort of necessary within research and I realize that but there was over-summarization that I think could have been filtered out of the book version and perhaps left for an academic paper or unabridged version for those who want the full deep dive The Liberator by Alex Kershaw.Col. Felix Sparks (later to be a Brigadier General) lands in Sicily in the first European invasion and makes it all the way to the gates of Dachau. He basically saw the entire trajectory of the Allied fight and victory over the Axis powers in WWII and this book is required reading for that reason. It gives you a full sense of just how awful the fighting in WWII really was and the quiet heroes who did it. Along with the other WWII books mentioned here and below, I recommend Ken Burns’ documentary The War, if only because it is largely based on these books and gives you a sense of the whole picture. While aimed at a broad readership, one suspects that publishing specialists would also benefit from reading it, due to its analysis of many book business models and technologies under development. After this second stage of shooting in New York was complete, in 1998, the director returned to San Francisco to include the additional essential sequences in the final edit. While the filmmaker was away, however, S.A.I.D. had already commenced postproduction on another documentary called Live Nude Girls Unite, and the BookWars team had to defer to their stripper-activist production colleagues.

BookWars has screened at festivals, theatrical venues, and broadcast outlets including: NHK (Japan), SVT (Sweden) Sveriges Television, PBS, (US), Metrochannels (US) MSG Metro Channels, Book Television (Canada), Arte/ZDF Arte (France and Germany), The Florida Film Festival, The Kansas City Film Jubilee, Facets, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Danish National Film Institute, Brotfabrik (Berlin), the 911 Media Arts Center in Seattle, amongst others. However, if one reads Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing , by John Thompson, (Polity, 2021), that casual assumption is challenged.Knight’s Cross: A Life of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel by David Fraser. It’s going to feel weird reading a book about a German general in WWII but for Rommel we must make an exception. Yes, he fought for a terrible cause. But he did so brilliantly — as a soldier, strategist, and leader. His victories in North Africa were the stuff of legend, and had the US and British troops not ultimately had better resources, the whole thing might have turned out very differently. You cannot read about Rommel and not like and admire the man. I’m saying this so you’ll be prepared and ready to remind yourself that that doesn’t excuse his actions. But you can still learn from them. Thompson does a brilliant job of exploring the advent of technology and the reaction and interaction of publishers when facing the inevitability of eBooks. I’m certainly not recommending every book about war ever written, or even every book I’ve read on the subject, but instead a collection of the most meaningful. I’m sure I’ll miss some great books you’ve loved, so please suggest them in the comments. For this reason we must understand war and how it is won. And we must understand what it does to people. Doing this helps us politically, socially, and consciously. It also helps us with whatever we happen to be doing. Wars are textbooks in logistics, planning, leadership, and execution. We can learn those skills by studying the best. We can also learn what not to do from the wars and generals who fared badly.

At the same time, Beat writer and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Bookstore viewed the cut of BookWars, and applauded it as being “Anarchistic”. The content generated on this blog is for information purposes only. This Article gives the views and opinions of the authors and does not reflect the views and opinions of the Impact of Social Science blog (the blog), nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Please review our comments policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier.This is sort of a bonus recommendation. Though this book is fiction (and was at the time extraordinarily popular — and eventually a bad movie), it is actually quite good. Not only that, it covers a few themes that are quite important to the Civil War. One is the home guard, which patrolled for deserters and draft dodgers (on both sides) with brutal effectiveness. The war basically descended into gang violence in the middle states. Second, it includes the Battle of the Crater, which Inman fought in. It’s not very well known but incredibly strange. Third, the disillusionment of Confederate soldiers at the end of the war. People forget how utterly beat the South was (in large part due to the strategies of Sherman) and how this made many people realize how utterly bankrupt the cause was. This is one of the most comprehensive and detailed explorations of the publishing industry with respect to the last 10 to 15 years of the digital revolution that I have ever read.