Academic publishing

From Michael Hansen's perspective, the textbook industry is having a Spotify moment.

The chief executive of Cengage, a leading publisher, brought up the music streaming service on an investor call last month, in reference to a question about the future of physical textbooks.  Read more

The world of scholarly communication is broken. Giant, corporate publishers with racketeering business practices and profit margins that exceed Apple's treat life-saving research as a private commodity to be sold at exorbitant profits.  Read more

Those of us who labor in scholarly publishing can be forgiven for thinking that the world is a tiny place. The academic journal, the keystone of our industry, cumulatively brings in about $10 billion a year, not enough to get the CEOs of Uber or Pinterest out of bed in the morning; and the book, the much-despised book, is in retreat everywhere.  Read more

Last summer, Harvard University Press (HUP) asked a book designer to create a T-shirt for its softball squad's intramural season.  Read more