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wombat_sochoThe late Scott Imes and others often complained about publishing companies' drive to get rid of the mid-list authors - the guys who didn't automatically sell like Tom Wolfe, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, and who often wind up doing movie & TV novelizations or doing chunks of novel series. Maybe the market's getting ready to give the mid-list authors a break. Chris Anderson's essay takes a look at how Netflix and Amazon.com are making obscure films, TV series and books popular again thanks to the power of market aggregation through the Internet, and how that might work out for the music business.
On a similar topic, a British company is looking at the possibility of blending mobile phones with smart cards to put a new spin on cashless buying. The article also talks about Simpay's tackling of the micropayment problem, which is also addressed glancingly in Anderson's essay.
The latter kind of hooks in with Cobb's post on gearheads which I linked earlier in the month. The demand is out there, and it looks like someone's workin' on it...so how much you want to bet somebody has it on the market in a year or two at the outside?
On a similar topic, a British company is looking at the possibility of blending mobile phones with smart cards to put a new spin on cashless buying. The article also talks about Simpay's tackling of the micropayment problem, which is also addressed glancingly in Anderson's essay.
The latter kind of hooks in with Cobb's post on gearheads which I linked earlier in the month. The demand is out there, and it looks like someone's workin' on it...so how much you want to bet somebody has it on the market in a year or two at the outside?
