The Business of Publishing

Comfort Reads on the 21st Century

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One of the worst-kept secrets in my household is the fact that I buy multiple copies of the same book. For myself. I am not alone in this habit, but I’ve noticed a new twist on an old concept. Last week, I observed a discussion among readers: the importance of purchasing comfort reads to store on digital readers. Make the reader happy, and that reader will buy more books. These readers weren’t looking for free digital copies of books they’d already purchased. No, they were discussing second or third purchases of favorite books. This time, the discussion focused on the […]

The Future of Publishing

More on Joining the Conversation

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The first thesis of The Cluetrain Manifesto is “markets are conversations”. Stretch, twist, transform, voila!: books are conversations. I was reminded of this last week as fragments of a Twitter discussion caught my eye: a reader and bookseller (both located in different states) engaged in a conversation about buying from local booksellers. The reader noted that while romance readers buy a lot of books, independent booksellers are not always romance-friendly; thus these book buyers go elsewhere. The bookseller said (and I paraphrase), “Hmm. Maybe we could do a better job of attracting these readers.”

Marketing For Introverts

Commercial Break: Twitter and Tweet Camp

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While it can seem like the move to digital is the only topic consuming publishing industry, online marketing has resurfaced as a trending topic. Once the province of display ads (with a few wild experiments with the evil pop-ups!), online marketing is now, for better or worse, all about social media. Your MySpace, your Facebook, your Twitter. Just as when the blog craze hit (remember when everybody had to have one, even if the reason wasn’t clear?), social media mania is filling the halls of the publishing business. It’s not a bad thing. Because, social media (and marketing) is, at

Marketing For Introverts

BEA 2009: A Bit of Deja Vu All Over Again

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It is perhaps telling that I left BookExpo America 2009 with the same feeling I had in 2006. And 2008. This time, however, there is also a layer of optimism, the product, actually, of the Publishing 3.0 presentation from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. It’s too big for a nutshell, so hang on for bit. I’m sure I’ll bring it all home. Things that make sense in one bubble might not make sense in another. This year’s theme was Big Ideas. I didn’t see any (unless forgoing a booth in favor of a meeting room is a Big

The Future of Publishing

Digital Piracy: Redux

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Yay New York Times, you have discovered book piracy! And it is everything your dreamed and more. Oh and look: it’s authors who have never authorized their books for the digital marketplace who are being pirated. Piracy has been a fact of our lives for as long as we’ve had marketplaces. The NYT starts with a wide-eyed description of author Ursula Le Guin discovering a digital copy of her 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness on Scribd.com. To date, there is no legal electronic version of this book. I’m surprised by the lack of analytical thought accompanying this revelation.

The Future of Publishing

Seth Harwood on Podcasting and Social Media

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Last week, the Internets were treated to a rather whiny post from an author who felt that agents were the only thing standing between her and literary greatness. The truth of the matter is that it’s a tough business out there, and sometimes it takes talent plus a little something extra to get your work noticed. Sometimes it takes thinking outside the box. Over the past few years, we’ve had the special privilege of meeting some authors who not only exhibit incredible talent, but also the ability to connect with readers — in a huge way — through non-traditional means.

Non-Traditional Publishing

The Publishing Quadrant: Where do you belong?

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[BS: Today we bring you a guest post from Joanna Penn, from The Creative Penn blog. As publishing changes, we’re seeing increased overlap between worlds that previously seemed like publishing silos. Where do you fall in the quadrant?] There have been a few posts in the publishing blog world recently that seem to set certain groups against each other. There was #agentfail, Victoria Strauss’ response to self-publishing positivity and Indie Author’s defence of self-publishing, amongst many others. But despite our differences, we are still a community of people who love books, love writing, and love creativity. We may sit in

Non-Traditional Publishing

Amazonfail: Post-Mortem

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Days later, Amazon has maintained corporate silence on the issue of mistakenly flagging certain books as “adult”, a designation that serves to delist a product (not just books) from sales rankings, making it difficult to find them — unless you know how to look — in the Amazon catalog. While it might represent a blip in overall Amazon business, this error had real-life impact on authors and publishers. Imagine for a moment being the author whose newly released title was impacted by this error. You don’t get a do-over. Right now, the episode known as “Amazonfail” remains a trending topic

Square Pegs, The Business of Publishing

Today a Boycott, Tomorrow a Revolution

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It should come as no surprise that a group of enterprising Amazon customers have joined together to boycott Kindle books priced about $9.99. I’ve been holding my own private boycott for months now, for reasons stated at great length (sorry, Christopher Moore, you were an unwitting catalyst and victim, though another author was a winner). It’s curious that it has taken so long for this protest to form; then again, it seems to a lot of us that Kindle edition prices are creeping up. Boycotters are buying books from your competitors while leaving yours in the virtual shopping cart. Maybe

Non-Traditional Publishing

If I Were A Gatekeeper

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Looking back, the worst part about the New Think panel at South by Southwest was not the lack of new thinking. It was the sense that the panelists didn’t have a plan for executing on the audience comments. There was no discussion, no follow-up questions, no suggestion that something would come from the audience-as-focus-group approach. So with a bit of my eternal “once more with feeling” optimism, I’m going to lay out some of the issues and my thoughts on them. This is in no way an all-encompassing list, so feel free to add your own ideas. You may be

The Future of Publishing
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