Submitted by Dale on July 8, 2007 - 12:06pm
Elastic Path is a Vancouver based commerce vendor who not only "get" business blogging but prove it by doing it well on their Get Elastic blog. They recently did a video-cast on their thoughts at the close at the Book Expo of America: Breaking Down the Book Expo. Book publishing is a topic I've loosely followed for quite a few years, so it was very interesting to hear their take.
A large part of their discussion involved changing distribution channels. Their comments resonated with my memories of this playing out in the computer industry as computers became cheaper. The established companies struggled with whether or not they should use sales channels that allowed them compete with their own distributors. The book industry has many notable differences from the computing industry of 20 years ago, so direct comparison isn't useful. However, I suspect there's some useful lessons buried in the past!
And I can't help but think, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or is it same crap, different day?
