Digital Inc.
From Print to E-Book-Inside the Transformation of the Book Industry
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- Vorbestellbar
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- Erwartet am 6. Jan. 2026
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- 8,99 €
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- Vorbestellbar
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- 8,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
The digital transformation of the past fifty years has been widely chronicled, but the story of how the book industry went from print to digital has never been adequately told.
As a widely admired literary agent and the founder of one of the very first e-book publishers, Richard Curtis was present at the creation. He knows the whole story as only an insider can. Digital Inc. is the first book to recount in detail the conversion of printed books to digital and the struggles of publishers to embrace a new business and creative paradigm after five hundred years of dedication to print on paper. The upheaval changed not just books but the people who write, read, and publish them.
Digital Inc. blends a thoroughly researched history with an account of how Curtis and a team of hotshots built their electronic book company from scratch and turned it into a multimillion-dollar company in the vanguard of digital transformation, pioneering innovations that still shape the book business today. The story of how the e-book morphed from a an idle fantasy into an industry-shaping powerhouse is told against the backdrop of decades of tumult in publishing, from the birth of international media conglomerates and the explosion of social media to the rise of Amazon and the emergence of new business models unimaginable a generation ago.
In the tradition of Hackers, Fire in the Valley, and Soul of a New Machine, Digital Inc. explores the personal, social, and creative complexities-as well as the daunting technical and economic hurdles-that the progenitors of the e-book revolution had to overcome. Curtis's wise and witty voice brings to life the colorful characters who revolutionized publishing and continue to transform it in the rapidly-dawning age of AI.
For everyone who cares about books and their continuing impact on our culture-from writers and publishing professionals to countless avid readers-Digital Inc. is an absorbing, eye-opening guide to today's new world of books and how it came to be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Literary agent and former PW contributor Curtis (This Business of Publishing) delivers a stimulating and in-depth chronicle of publishing's digital revolution. The account begins with a recap of Curtis's publishing career, during which he launched one of the first e-book publishers, E-Reads, in 1999, a move he confesses "was ill-considered if not utterly reckless." But he was determined to find new ways for authors to connect with readers and to make publishing more efficient. He also helped pioneer book proposals sent via email as well as automated royalty-accounting models that are still used today. Elsewhere, Curtis recounts the e-book pricing court battles of the 2010s involving Amazon, Apple, and the Big Five publishers, asserting that Amazon's "arrogant, predatory and intransigent policies," such as its refusal to raise the price of new e-books from , provoked the conflict, while acknowledging that the publishers teamed up with Apple to combat the online retailer's domination of the e-book business, making Amazon "literally and legally" the victim of a conspiracy. Throughout, Curtis shares colorful stories of his clients and publishing associates, as when he recounts mystery novelist Harlan Ellison calling him on Easter, after discovering a typo in a just-published book, and urging Curtis to call the publisher, in church, and demand that he destroy all copies. Also included are selection of the year-in-review poems that Curtis published in PW from 1985 to 2024 and an annotated E-Reads book contract. Publishing professionals will find this fascinating.
