Medium says it is continuing to experiment with how best to compensate writers, but the recent departure of the contributing editor behind one of its collections shows there is still a tension between Medium the magazine and Medium the open platform…
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Apple ebooks damages trial to start July 14 after appeals court refuses delay
A trial in July will determine how much Apple will pay in punishment for fixing ebook prices. A lead lawyer says the tab could be over $800 million.…
Read MoreU.S. is set for Apple’s ebook appeal, but maybe it should be looking at Amazon instead
The Justice Department filed a 117-page brief in an appeal over its antitrust claims against Apple's ebook policies. Meanwhile, it has little to say about Amazon, which appears more powerful than ever.…
Read MoreWith Hachette, has Amazon gone one step too far?
For some time now, there’s been a whole lotta grumbling about the market dominance of Amazon in the world of books. Authors…
Read MoreWordPress parent Automattic closes huge funding round that values the company at $1B
Automattic, the parent company of popular blog-hosting and publishing platform WordPress, has raised a funding round of $160 million to help it develop better online and mobile tools for publishing, a round that values the company at over $1 billion…
Read MoreWordPress parent Automattic said to be raising a VC round that values it at $1 billion
Automattic, the San Francisco-based company that is responsible for the WordPress web-publishing and blog-hosting platform — and the associated open-source community —…
Read MoreWe are drowning in data about readers and attention, but which metrics really matter? You won’t like the answer
There are more ways than ever to measure traffic, readership, attention and engagement with our content. But all that means is there are even more things to distract us from the important questions about who we are trying to reach and how.…
Read MoreThe internet didn’t invent viral content or clickbait journalism — there’s just more of it now, and it happens faster
Many people seem to believe that the idea of "clickbait" or artificially viral content was invented by the internet or social media, but it has been around for centuries and was arguably perfected by newspapers -- all the web has done is make it faster and more efficient…
Read MoreBrands aren’t the only ones becoming publishers and doing journalism — advocacy groups are too
Advocacy and non-profit agencies like Human Rights Watch fall into a group that veteran media-watcher Dan Gillmor calls "almost journalists," and they are expanding their ability to produce their own journalism in much the same way that brands and advertisers have been…
Read MoreInkshares wants to create a hybrid of traditional book publisher and crowdfunded digital platform
The founders of Inkshares don't think the traditional publishing industry is broken, just antiquated and inefficient -- and they think marrying crowdfunding and the kinds of services publishers used to offer makes for a pretty compelling service for writers and ultimately for readers as well…
Read MoreLinkedIn has the one thing other publishing platforms would kill for
LinkedIn, which just opened up its publishing platform to anyone for free, has one big strength that most of its traditional publishing competitors don't have, and that should be keeping them awake at night -- if they aren't already…
Read MoreThe Netflix of kids’ books? Epic launches on iPad for $9.99/month
Will kids like an all-you-can-read service on the iPad? Newcomer Epic hopes so, as it follows the path of Oyster, a buzzy service that is establishing a Netflix-like model for books.…
Read MoreWhen tweets become ads, or how Twitter continues to blur the line between speech and publishing
Posting things to Twitter might feel like conversation, but in practice it's a lot more like publishing -- which is how a New York Times movie reviewer's off-hand comment on Twitter turned into a full-page newspaper ad, even though he didn't want it to…
Read MoreThe magazine as platform
Developing better, more robust and open publishing platforms in particular should be the publishing industry's priority. In a digital world, publishing is a process, not an event, in which the lines between information gatherers, sources and consumers are blurred.…
Read MoreAuthor Tim Ferriss launches publishing venture aimed at audio-books
Tim Ferriss, the author of popular how-to lifestyle books like “The 4-Hour Body,” says he is launching a custom publishing venture aimed…
Read MoreFlipboard lands a whale as it signs a deal to add Time Inc. magazines to its platform
Flipboard has signed a deal with magazine publisher Time Inc. to add the company's titles to its mobile content-aggregation app, based on a promise to help Time reach new audiences and boost its advertising revenue.…
Read MoreIt looks like dark search is now the norm at Google
The latest traffic report from publishing analytics startup Parse.ly shows Google still dominating in terms of referring traffic to publishers' sites -- but that referral data now comes without associated search terms 87 percent of the time.…
Read MoreFlipping out over aggregation
A conceptual problem arises from thinking about Flipboard in publishing terms (an error Flipboard itself encourages), when its actual role in the value chain is much closer to that of a traditional re-seller of goods, in this case news content.…
Read MoreAre Flipboard and Currents marketing partners or scams that take advantage of publishers?
Josh Marshall of the political blog network Talking Points Memo says that he has pulled his site's feeds from both Google Currents and Flipboard because he says he sees these services as "scams against publishers"…
Read MorePutting readers first
The long-term survival of traditional news-gathering organizations such as the post depends on figuring out how content originators can participate financially in the value exchanges that occur around their content once it is released into the wild.…
Read MoreCondé Nast gets deeper into e-commerce, leads $20M round in French luxury resale site
Condé Nast, the publishing powerhouse behind brands like Vogue and Vanity Fair, has led a $20 million investment in luxury resale site Vestiaire Collective.…
Read MoreSome advice for media: Just because you can measure something doesn’t make it important
As Guardian data journalist Stijn Debrouwere points out, many media companies have an obsession with measuring things, without understanding what is important and therefore worth measuring.…
Read MoreFeedly dominating the post-Reader world, and other web-publishing insights from Parse.ly
Publishing analytics startup Parse.ly has raised $5 million and has released its first report showing the top sources of traffic across its customer base. It claims hundreds of them, including big-name ones like Atlantic Media, Reuters and Mashable.…
Read MoreMedium needs to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up
Does Medium want to be a platform for writing of all kinds, or does it want to be a magazine-style curated experience for readers? The two are very different, and the potential for conflict is great.…
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