Independent Thinking on Publishing's Future
Introduction Academic journal publishing has never been easy. But as we settle into 2025, what used to be slow-moving tectonic shifts have turned into a full-blown earthquake. Publishers, editors, and scholarly communication managers are grappling with open access mandates, AI-generated submissions, shrinking funding, and the ghost of predatory publishing. The peer review system groans under … Read more
Introduction Toni Morrison didn’t just write novels—she orchestrated symphonies with sentences, dismantled history with dialogue, and haunted generations with the poetry of pain. To read Morrison is to be submerged in the power of words. Her prose doesn’t merely communicate; it conjures, unsettles, and redefines. She wasn’t interested in telling straightforward stories. She was after … Read more
Introduction Penguin Random House (PRH) recently announced its acquisition of Wonderbly, a London-based personalized children’s book publisher best known for its smash hit, The Little Boy Who Lost His Name. The move raised more than a few eyebrows in the publishing world. Here was the biggest trade book publisher in the world getting into a … Read more
Introduction In 2025, the digital publishing landscape in the United States is no longer a quirky alternative to traditional books—it’s the main arena. Print hasn’t vanished, but digital publishing has decisively taken the wheel. From algorithmic content discovery to indie authors who run their own global micro-empires, the American digital publishing ecosystem has matured—and mutated—into … Read more
Introduction It’s hard to imagine the internet without Wikipedia. For nearly a quarter-century, it’s been the awkward but brilliant cousin at the digital dinner table: occasionally misunderstood, frequently doubted, but somehow indispensable. Need to remember the plot of an obscure 18th-century novel? Want to settle an argument about the capital of Kazakhstan? Curious about the … Read more