linda nordstrom

15 Marzo 201115 Marzo 2011Elzeviri

The Future of reading

Really sorry for the delay. I was in England for a while and I was sorrow not be with all you…
I think it’s pretty clear that the future of books is digital. I’m sure we’ll always have deckle-edge hardcovers and mass market paperbacks, but I imagine the physical version of books will soon assume a cultural place analogous to that of FM radio. Although the radio is always there (and isn’t that nice?), I really only use it when I’m stuck in a rental car and forgot my auxilliary input cord. The rest of the time I’m relying on shuffle and podcasts.

6 Gennaio 20116 Gennaio 2011Reading room

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

By Linda Nordstrom (leggi in italiano)

Hello everyone, first I would like to make a book critical of waiting for your critical readers.

For Franzen, this is the trick: not to outgrow who we are but instead to accept it, and in so doing, to accept the world of which we are a part. That’s the freedom to which the title is referring, the freedom at the center of this consuming and extraordinarily moving book.In such a landscape, Walter’s difficulties with his son mirror his problems with his father, while Patty begins to see something of her mother in herself.

21 Novembre 201021 Novembre 2010Cross selling

New prizes for new technologies

L’appuntamento settimanale con Linda dagli Stati Uniti (leggi in italiano)

Hello Michael,
I know: this part we give prizes to everyone and everything. But this time I would like to tell you what our English cousins are doing, so that here we are inventing the same thing. It was not silent, then, that digital publishing has recently established.
The Association of Online Publishers (AOP), an organization based in the UK that represents digital publishing companies that create original, branded, quality content, announced the recipients of its Digital Publishing Awards for 2010.

9 Novembre 20109 Novembre 2010Cross selling

Why the book business may soon be the most digital of all media industries

New mail from USA. By Linda Nordstrom (leggi in italiano)

Consider it an inauguration of sorts, a celebration of the e-book industry becoming a member of the major media club just as digital music and online video have before them. When you influence a billion dollars, people have to take you seriously. In the book business, it means that traditional publishers can no longer live in deny-and-delay mode; meanwhile, digital publishers get invited to better parties and people in other media businesses like TV and magazines look over and wonder if they could cut a slice of this new pie just for them.

17 Ottobre 201017 Ottobre 2010Reading room

What happens on the other side of ocean

New mail from Usa, by Linda Nordstrom (leggi in italiano)

Dear Michele, let me give a little input on what happens on this side of ocean with this editor’s note Okes of OR publishing that i’ve received this week. I hope the article will contribute to the debate on the issue of digital book that, as I understand, it is also felt by you.

Herewith figures most of us have heard in some variant: half of U.S. book sales will be digital by 2015 and brick-and-mortar book sales will drop by 50% in that time.
I’m not a theoretician: I’m an editor and publisher, and what I am looking for is a practical solution to fix things, something that can be implemented. I’ve been in independent publishing for the last twenty-five years, and each year, at each of the five companies I’ve worked with, the scenario has been pretty much the same: declining revenues despite occasional upward blips, the stores getting sparser and those that remain, skipping titles more and more.

8 Agosto 20108 Agosto 2010Reading room

The most awards but not most talented. A photo of contemporary american literature.

Correspondence from the other side of the ocean
by Linda Nordstrom

Are the writers receiving the major awards and official recognition really the best writers today? Or are they overrated mediocrities with little claim to recognition by posterity? The question is harder than ever to answer today, yet it is a worthwhile exercise to attempt (along with identifying underrated writers not favored by bureaucracy).