Non-Traditional Publishing

I kind of wanted to stay out of the way of the ScrollMotion Iceberg iTunes application. While I have issues with the execution — can’t the publishing industry use something akin to, oh, collective clout to create a real iTunes store for books instead of foisting endless application after application (and associated management of said applications) upon us? — I applaud the fact that people out there are thinking of ways to bring books and people together. On the the other hand, I also feel like Iceberg is a clear example of the utter contempt some people in the publishing […]

I have a friend who is heading off to Paris for a long vacation. I guess she wanted to see how the other half — the people who survive in cold parts of the world — live. My Paris experience was in February, standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower on a cold, clear winter night, the city below me. The halls of the Louvre are astoundingly empty during that time as well. Is this a big, crazy idea that will take a lot of time and effort and smarts? Of course. This isn’t, of course, about Paris. My

So, last week there were two big announcements in publishing. The first, of course, was the Google Book Search settlement, which received a huge amount of attention (a trend continuing to this week — it’s that big!). The second was an(other) announcement from Random House that they’re messing around with ebook and digital content royalties. Let’s put this another way: the week that Google effectively sets the royalty to content owners at 60-something percent (there’s a bit of math involved, so, for today, I’m rounding), Random House decides that 25% of net amounts received by the publisher should be the

So here I am, in London, part of a country with neither the Sony eReader nor the Amazon Kindle, yet dinner conversation turned, as conversations often do, to the fact that the Sony eReader will soon be available in the UK. I think that’s just cool, even as I think, “What’s taking so long, Sony, Amazon?” Let me tell you: awareness of the Kindle, particularly, is great, and people show great interest in the concept when they see an ereader in the wild. I’ve been gone more than I’ve been home for the past few weeks, and I’m getting lots

I am increasingly convinced that ebooks are not going to be the next big thing. While every pundit waits eagerly for signs of an ebook “surge”, ebooks will increase market share in a slow and steady way. By the time it’s noticed, ebooks will simply be part of the mainstream reading mix. It’s closer to reality than you think. I worry about that lack of consumer input in the epub standards debate. I remain ever-convinced that the publishing industry doesn’t really know what’s going on out there in consumer-world; if they did, then they’d see how ebooks are being purchased

It is not surprising that Amazon has told publishers that it’s their POD (print-on-demand) service or no sales through Amazon. It is surprising that, well, anyone is surprised. Did y’all think Amazon was buying Booksurge for the fun of it? What other outcome did you expect? Readers don’t care if a book ships from a massive warehouse or is, quite literally, hot off the press. I am not joking. While the publishing industry worries about Google (and I am still convinced that working with search engines to optimize access to your content is in the best interest of everyone) and

It’s like we invented the written word, and we decided to only write books. Anyone cringing? Feeling a twinge of guilt? Sort of thinking “that’s me, that’s what I’m doing”? Then, “But, hey, books are the be-all and end-all of storytelling, I’m cool.” No worries, mates! That quote wasn’t directed at you. Jane McGonigal was talking to gamers. Talking about the idea that they have, uh, confined their medium to the screen (or box, take your pick). During her fantastic (who knew there was a “Soldier Boy” dance) SXSW Keynote, McGonigal stressed the importance of bringing alternate reality as practiced

Though I hesitate to make predictions, I’ve always been a bandwagon sort of girl, so here is mine for 2008 (what? too late? never.): 2008 will be the year that ebooks go mainstream. In the ten years I’ve been writing about epublishing and ebooks, the dual stories of the ubiquity of ebooks and the death of the novel have made headlines, the latter surely more than the former. People outside the publishing industry are talking about ebooks. In 1996, Hardshell Word Factory was established as an epublisher. In 1998, I wrote a profile of Mary Z. Wolf, the former author

Bubbling under the surface of various discussions about entertainment media is the question nobody in the industry wants asked: what is the value of what we’re selling to our customers? With physical media, it’s easy enough to point to a book and say, “You get all that and more!” The device I choose today might be different tomorrow. With digital media, consumers are scratching their heads. Especially since the fashion is to make the use of digital media less flexible than physical media. It’s a particularly interesting question for the book business — how do you go from a culture

I am cranky. You’ve been warned. So I’m minding my own business, or, rather, minding other people’s business as I cruise the Internet when what has to be one of the dumber notions to cross my screen appears. Given the stuff I read online every day, this is really saying something. Devices don’t make pirates. Unreasonable barriers make pirates. In what has to be a desperate attempt to find a new angle on the now-waning Kindle story, a few writers have speculated that the Kindle can spark book piracy. Yeah. That’s what the world needs to worry about. The Kindle