The Business of Publishing

How To Avoid The (Anti-DRM) Revolution

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As most of you know, a little Book Fair is happening right now in Frankfurt. What happens there will likely stay there, and much of the news trickling out of the event seems to indicate that the conference has a bit of a “same time, next year” feel to it. Especially when it comes to digital rights management. DRM. It’s a term you need to understand. Publisher’s Weekly reports that an entire session, thrillingly (and we do mean that sincerely) called “Publishers and Search Engines: Facing the Challenge” discussed an approach called Automated Content Access Protocol, or ACAP for short. […]

The Future of Publishing

Ranting and Raving, Harlequin Style

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This week, the hot publishing news comes from Torstar: Harlequin will be cutting about 4% of its global workforce. This is a result of, yes, declining sales. And this, by the way, has been an ongoing theme for a few years. Harlequin, the world’s leader in romance fiction, is not selling books in sufficient numbers. It’s not that the audience doesn’t exist; it’s that the publisher can’t seem to find the readers. Looking back at our archives (we do not advise doing this without a stiff drink), we see that over and over, there’s a similar theme. Harlequin books are

The Business of Publishing

In Which The Publishing Industry Continues To Exhibit A Profound Lack Of Understanding Of The Real World

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There is a saying that, if we recall correctly, suggests that closing the barn door after the horse escapes is rather foolish. Unless you are really trying to protect hay, in which case, you may ultimately be seen as practical. We are not sure the latest scheme initiated by publishers will be seen as practical, possibly because it does not seem to, oh, show an awareness of how the world works. Let us begin with a bit of positivity: creating smart “use” tags — a concept called digital rights management in the real world — to identify levels of content

The Future of Publishing

If Content Is King…

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We’re going to do something dangerous. We’re going to make an assumption (yes, yes, we know): we’re going to assume that a few of you are old enough to remember the olden days. Those halcyon moments of yore, when watching television meant taking what they wanted to show you, when listening to the radio meant suffering through someone else’s idea of good music, and when reading the book you wanted was dependent on your local bookstore’s decision to stock it. Times have changed. We have downloadable television. We have satellite radio and iPods and MP3 players in our cars. We

Marketing For Introverts, The Future of Publishing

More Web Advice For Writers

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Let us start the day by returning to a topic near and dear to everyone’s heart: your website. For reasons that shall remain private, we have been doing a worldwide tour of author websites for the past several weeks, and can say that there’s something rotten in the state of websites. First, the tough love. To those authors who insist upon adding a musical interlude to the web experience, stop. Read carefully: your taste in music sucks. There is absolutely no song that you can include as part of your web experience that will sound good to anyone, including you.

Back To Basics, Marketing For Introverts

Analyzing Penguin’s Marketing Strategy Because We Can

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We are admittedly a bit a slow side this morning — the coffee maker is taking its sweet time, the slacker! — so perhaps we’re completely missing the punch line here. But we doubt it. See, Penguin is seeing a return to the magic of serialized novels as a way to build online buzz. Naturally, our first thought was, “Cool!” That thought is long gone, replaced by a much more comfortable and familiar “Huh?” There are so many things to ponder here. First, of course, is the price. Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist (or, rather, G.W.

Books/Mags/Blogs, Marketing For Introverts

Suspension Of Belief

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The current trend in the blogging community is analysis and discussion of lonelygirl15, and we are ever-indulgent of trends. Hmm, no, that is not true. The fact of the matter is that lonelygirl15 is an example of our current thought process. Hey, you said, “BS, we really want to know what goes on in your evil little mind.” We think you should be grateful that we’ve decided against sharing all the thoughts about laundry and whether or not to tell the husband that the vine has officially devoured the garage. So, lonelygirl15 is a bona-fide YouTube phenomenon. She is, ostensibly,

Marketing For Introverts, Non-Traditional Publishing

Linking Is A Virtue, Not Linking Is A Vice

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We have been understandably worked up about this whole online presence thing this week. Hmm, maybe it’s not so understandable — it strikes us that you are not privy to our lengthy debates with the husband. Trust us when we say that nothing makes an evening fly by like a discussion about making the web a better place for the world. Today’s topic is links. You are familiar with them, we trust, but just in case, here is an example. In this case, we are linking to Jill Monroe’s blog, mostly because we cannot believe that she puts pictures like

Back To Basics

The Thinking Piece

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Once your domain name is secured, you can breathe easy. No need to worry about someone grabbing your precious name and forcing you to spend hard-earned cash on buying it back (by the way, if you do spend said cash, do not feel bad; it happens a lot…in your next life, go with an unusual name). Your inclination will be to throw something up on the Internet and wait for the traffic to start driving through. Okay, we’ll allow you to do this: throw up a blog and then come right back here. Many hosting services allow you to do

Back To Basics

Ending The Interview With A Bit Of Why

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After taking a break to set the world record for most meetings attended in a single hour (we also came close to most meetings in a single day), we return to our interview with the brilliant mind that is Booksquare. In theory, this interview covers the who, what, when, where, why, and how of character blogging. So far, we’ve touched on how, a little bit of who, and where with a bit of what. Let’s get this party started (yes, hello, caffeine!):

Marketing For Introverts
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