A guide to the creative industries

Creative Industries: Contracts Between Art and Commerce
Author: Richard E. Caves
Genre: Academic - microeconomics in action

If you are interested in getting an in-depth understanding of how the creative industries work - movie production, book publishing, art galleries, music distribution, etc. - I know no better starting point than this book.

It explains why Hollywood occasionally releases ten ton turkeys like Travolta's infamous 'Battlestar Galactica', it illuminates exactly how difficult it is to get a fiction book published (and why), and it exposes how major music publishers have been ripping off their artists in a thorough and systematic manner. And lots more. Not a light read, but really interesting stuff. If I were to teach a course on either the creative industries or media economics, this would be the core curriculum.

The Medici Effect

The Medici Effect
Author: Frans Johansson
Genre: Business/innovation

Inspiring book about how innovation happens when you mix up different fields and disciplines, with lots of case stories. While a lot of the evidence presented in the book is anecdotal, the main argument still rings quite true.

The Medici in the title refers to the Renaissance Italian merchant family - according to the author, the intellectual environment in Florence at the time of the Medicis was an early example of an innovation powerhouse.