Books by Michael Bhaskar

'A terrific and important book . . . it's a great, fresh take on how the 21st century is transforming the way we select everything from food to music' David Bodanis, author of E=MC2In the past two years humanity has produced more data than the rest of human history combined. We carry a library of data in our pockets, accessible at any second. We have more information and more goods at our disposal than we know what to do with. There is no longer any competitive advantage in creating more information. Today, value lies in curation: selecting, finding and cutting down to show what really matters.Curation reveals how a little-used word from the world of museums became a crucial and at times controversial strategy for the twenty-first century. Today's most successful companies - Apple, Netflix, Amazon - have used curation to power their growth, by offering customers more tailored and appropriate choices.Curation answers the question of how we can live and prosper in an age of information overload. In the context of excess, it is not only a sound business strategy, but a way to make sense of the world.

Publishing is in crisis. Publishing has always been in crisis, but today's version, fuelled by the digital boom, has some frightening symptoms. Trade publishers see their mid-lists hollowed, academic customers face budgetary pressures from higher education spending cuts, and educational publishers encounter increased competition across their markets. But over the centuries, forced change has been the norm for publishers. Somehow, they continue to adapt.This ground-breaking study, the first of its kind, outlines a theory of publishing that allows publishing houses to focus on their core competencies in difficult times while building a broader notion of what they are capable of. Tracing the history of publishing from the press works of fifteenth-century Germany to twenty-first-century Silicon Valley, via Venice, Beijing, Paris and London, 'The Content Machine' offers a new understanding of media and literature, analysing their many connections to technology and history. In answer to those who insist that publishing has no future in a digital age, this book gives a rejuvenated identity to this ever-changing industry and demonstrates how it can survive and thrive in a period of unprecedented challenges.