Joe Wikert's Profile

Expedited Morning Delivery: A solution in search of a problem

BusinessWeek is all hyped up about a new service they're offering print subscribers. It's called "expedited morning delivery." I first heard about it a couple of issues ago and didn't think much about it. Then when I went out to... Continue reading

Posted yesterday at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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My new job

I spent the last six weeks taking on some consulting projects and exploring full-time job opportunities. I've had the luxury of being very selective on both, but especially on the latter. My primary goal has been to find a role... Continue reading

Posted 5 days ago at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Coming soon: A universal ereading app

Last May I decided to stop buying Kindle ebooks. I had already amassed a nice Kindle library but I felt it was time to move on, particularly since B&N was about to release the industry's first eInk device with built-in... Continue reading

Posted 7 days ago at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Structured documents for science: JATS XML as canonical content format

It’s only my 7th day on the job here at PLOS as a product manager for content management. So it’s early days, but I’m starting to think about the role of JATS XML in the journal publishing process. I come... Continue reading

Posted Jun 10, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Never tell people what your book is about

Since the dawn of the printing press, authors have always carried a certain mystique within society. The advent of e-books and digital reading devices has only magnified this appeal. People tend to look at writers with fascination because of their... Continue reading

Posted Jun 4, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Why BEA was like a live performance of "The Innovator's Dilemma"

It's one of my favorite business books and I just had the pleasure of walking through it as a Broadway performance. OK, the Javits Center isn't on Broadway but it sure felt like I was surrounded by professional actors and... Continue reading

Posted Jun 3, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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The myth of plateauing ebook sales

My brilliant friend and industry colleague, Sam Missingham, was kind enough to ask me to preview this article she just published. She did a nice job piecing bits of information together to help us all understand the current and future... Continue reading

Posted May 28, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Screwpulp: An exciting new startup (that I'm part of!)

One of the benefits of my previous job is that it brought me much closer to the content startup community. I've met a lot of outstanding organizations but one that really grabbed my attention is a self-publishing startup called Screwpulp.... Continue reading

Posted May 22, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Memphis startup community rocks

For the past couple of years I've had the pleasure of working with a variety of startups in the content space and most of them are located on one of the two coasts here in the U.S. Last week was... Continue reading

Posted May 20, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Direct sales and community building

If you’ve been anywhere near publishing recently, you’ve probably been hit by the shrapnel of an exploding business model, a narrowing distribution network, or mind-numbing cutbacks. It’s fashionable for people who aren’t pouring their daily energies into words and stories... Continue reading

Posted May 15, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Bringing democracy back to digital

By exposing us to diverging viewpoints, fostering dissent, broadcasting scientific discoveries, and stretching our imagination beyond its sensory frame, books have promoted the rise of our modern social conscience. The many societal and technical revolutions of the 20th century have... Continue reading

Posted May 14, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Micro-consulting projects

Last week's article about my search for new full-time or consulting work generated a lot of interest. It was also nice to see the resulting surge in views of my LinkedIn profile. Thanks to everyone who tweeted and help spread... Continue reading

Posted May 13, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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WANTED: New full-time job or consulting work

An announcement was made last week saying TOC is no more and that I'm out of a job. The former was disappointing news for the publishing community while the latter was a particularly troubling development for my personal community, also... Continue reading

Posted May 6, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Earned Attention: More than a stack of paper

As an industry I think we're getting weary of all the various "rich content" experiments and products floating around these days. I have to admit that most make me want to yawn and move on to the next item in... Continue reading

Posted May 1, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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LinkedIn as publisher

I'm drawn to LinkedIn now more than ever before. The rate of connection requests I've been receiving there has also been accelerating over the past few months. Maybe it's due to all the uncertainty of the publishing industry but I... Continue reading

Posted Apr 29, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Direct sales of ebooks in multiple languages

O'Reilly has long been a leader in fostering community and building a direct sales channel. This week we took the next step in enhancing the customer's direct buying experience by offering German editions for many of our ebook titles. Take... Continue reading

Posted Apr 24, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Pre-publication samples

This one has been nagging at me for years and I'm amazed none of the major ebook retailers offer a solution. I'm talking about the ability to pre-order an ebook sample prior to publication. Today I received a bulk email... Continue reading

Posted Apr 22, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Why Paperight should be distributing your content

The opening statement on Paperight's "about" page says it all: Paperight turns any business with any printer and an Internet connection into a print-on-demand bookstore. This isn't just about distributing content through copy shops though. Paperight helps make content available... Continue reading

Posted Apr 22, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Author (R)evolution Day videos now available

If you missed TOC's first Author (R)evolution Day you missed a lot. Cory Doctorow kicked things off and more than 20 speakers followed with terrific presentations on marketing, audience development, choosing service providers, and my favorite topic, data. The room... Continue reading

Posted Apr 16, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Why I created a Flipboard magazine

Flipboard recently announced the ability for anyone to become a publisher on their platform. Within two weeks 500,000+ magazines were created. I created one of those and I'd like to tell you why. Before I do that though, let me... Continue reading

Posted Apr 15, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Best of TOC

It's challenging keeping up with publishing industry news and analysis. I have way too many content feeds to monitor and I'm sure you do too. We do our best to highlight the most important developments on the TOC website but... Continue reading

Posted Apr 11, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Will we ever see a "Spotify for ebooks"?

My music buying habits have definitely changed over the years. I'm doing a lot more streaming now and rarely buying individual tracks or albums. I use Spotify but I also started using Rdio. I'm still in the free trial period... Continue reading

Posted Apr 10, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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The future of educational publishing

The ebook revolution started with the launch of the original Kindle back in late 2007. More than 5 years later the world is now moving away from dedicated e-readers to multifunction tablets. Despite the dramatic rise in ebook sales most... Continue reading

Posted Apr 9, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Content ownership and resale

Over the past few weeks we've seen some landmark decisions on whether you really own that content you bought and if you can resell it. First, in the Kirtsaeng vs. Wiley case we learned that it's OK to buy low-priced... Continue reading

Posted Apr 8, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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Current state of formats and platforms

Remember the old days when PDF was pretty much the only way to distribute content and those PDFs were read on computer screens? PDF still lives, of course, but now we're also faced with offering content in mobi and EPUB... Continue reading

Posted Apr 3, 2013 at Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

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