In yesterday’s post, Gina Frangello talked life as an indie author. Or, more specifically, life as an indie author who is also an indie publisher. She toured, she was paid (sort of), she got great press. She learned lessons. What happened next. As she says:
One of the best parts of my job is discovering what goes on in all corners of publishing. If you look beyond Manhattan, you see innovation, experimentation, and, yes, consternation as changes to the industry seem to happen every day. I am asking those who are involved in these ventures to share successes, failures, ideas, and how they are surviving in an industry that constantly seems to be experiencing death throes. It turns out there is far more optimism, pragmatism, and creativity than there are worries about the demise of the industry. Today and tomorrow, I am pleased to feature
If you are contract, royalties, or publishing geek, today (yesterday?) was an exciting day. Sort of like the bully saying “I’m gonna beat you up” every day until the scrawny kid picks a fight. All concepts relative. As promised, agent Andrew Wylie did what he said he would: “We will take our 700 clients, see what rights are not allocated to publishers, and establish a company on their behalf to license those e-book rights directly to someone like Google, Amazon.com, or Apple. It would be another business, set up on parallel tracks to the frontlist book business.”
I’ve spent the past month listening and reading. I reminded myself of all the positive, cool, exciting projects happening in publishing today — and there are many (I’ve been asking those involved to post here to share what they are doing). I’ve considered what happens next and focused a lot on what readers are saying, about books, digital and print. Though everybody is writing about ebooks and the digital experience these days, I find I don’t have much new to add to the conversation; I’ve said it all before. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong, sometimes I evolved.
In order for an organization to effectively implement and weather change, there must be an organization-wide mandate to move in a new direction. Senior management must support and model the changes they want to make. Change comes from the top, and, if the recent CEO panel at Book Expo America 2010 is any indication, that is the biggest problem facing publishing today. There is no doubt that huge changes are facing the publishing industry. Many of these have been driven by readers and technology companies, the latter adroitly timing hardware and software to reach consumers just as their willingness to
Since the announcement that HarperStudio was being shuttered and its staff, Bob Miller excepted, would be absorbed into the larger HarperCollins machine, I have been thinking about what this means for publishers. HarperStudio was a high-profile experiment that barely had time to emerge from start-up mode, much less to achieve goals great and small. From my outsider perspective, one of their greatest accomplishments was proving the effectiveness of small teams. I may be romanticizing Studio, but it seemed to me an entity that functioned fairly autonomously within the larger HarperCollins entity. Yes, they could tap into the mighty HC machine,
Today, we welcome the genius Brett Sandusky, chief provocateur behind Publishr, a site focused on exploring the issues behind new publishing business models and challenges. A few weeks ago, Brett announced plans for a new publishing, er, Publishng project. Today, he expands upon his vision: Let’s start at the beginning: what is Publishr? Publishr is many things, but first and foremost it is a blog containing a collection of essays about the future of the publishing industry as we forge ahead into what many see as uncharted territory.
In last week’s post, I noted some of the questions our South by Southwest panel received from the audience. One, in particular, needed more time and space to address: what’s the deal with publishing and its slow adoption of transmedia storytelling, a concept that includes some types of enhanced ebooks. According the person asking the question (and a few on Twitter), everyone wants it. I don’t believe it is true that everyone wants publishing to leap into transmedia storytelling. If every story were multi-arc, multimedia, multi-point of entry, multi-everything, that would be akin to a diet of all reality television
Today, we welcome back author Pam Jenoff, who wrote a great article for Booksquare called “A Rose By Any Other Name: Has Genre Become Irrelevant?”. Today, Pam explores publicity challenges facing authors, including shifts in world of literary agents as they develop programs to help authors in the wild world of publicity. As you’ll see, there are no easy answers to the questions Pam is asking, and she invites new thinking into her paradox.
As a book buyer, I have a keen interest in thriving bookstores. As a book reader, I have a keen interest in independent publishing and access to my books. And while I wait for traditional independent bookstores to transition to robust physical and online presences, I have enjoyed the emergence of digital booksellers, particularly All Romance Ebooks and its sister store, OmniLit. Traditional PDF is the gateway drug to ebooks. All Romance Ebooks was founded in 2006 by Barb Perfetti and Lori James. The original site, All Romance, focuses on romance novels while OmniLit sells general fiction and non-fiction. Both
