This week I was interested to catch up with a friend and ex-colleague who has spent the last few years in the USA. Once close and familiar with UK trade publishing, he is now very much on the outside looking in, immersed as he is in educational and corporate digital subscriptions on the other side of the Atlantic.
We discussed what had happened since he left. The mergers and acquisitions. The spectacular falls from commercial grace. The speed of disintermediation. The astounding statistics of the self-publishing industry. Amazon, of course…
‘So it’s actually happened, then? The “correction” we’d been discussing for years, which never seemed to quite materialise?’
Perhaps it finally has. So much has changed in the UK publishing industry in recent years that warnings of a coming tipping point are beginning to sound passé. What was that story about frogs and boiling water?