The Future of Publishing

If you are a regular reader of Shelf Awareness (and if you’re not, you should be!), you know about the steady drumbeat of bookstores closing. You also know about the rising chorus from booksellers who are changing, adapting, growing, and understanding their place in the larger community. I am really lucky: I have two branches of an independent bookstore within comfortable distance of my house (the venerable Vromans). Sprinkled throughout my neighborhood are specialist bookstores. One is devoted to theology, one is devoted to cookbooks. Once upon a time, we had two stores focused on mystery and crime fiction, they […]

I am honored to bring you the following post from Dominique Raccah, Publisher and CEO of Sourcebooks. The other day, I wrote an article in response to Sourcebooks’ decision to delay the ebook release of their upcoming title Bran Hambric. Behind the scenes, there was much debate on this topic, and Dominique offered her thoughts behind this decision. I am so pleased that she chose to make them public here. In this time of change, there is nothing more important than open dialogue between stakeholders: publishers, agents, authors, readers, booksellers, distributors. It’s easy to think one side is right, the

We’ve got a time: 8:30 AM And a date: July 16 And a Room: The Harding Room Digital issues — from ebooks to territorial rights — are the hottest topics in publishing today. Throughout the publishing industry, changes to business-as-usual have a direct impact on authors. Traditional publishers are experimenting with formats, business models, clever ways to connect books and readers. Digital publishers, in the meantime, are leading the market with modern thinking and smart business models. And new businesses, new ideas, and new approaches to storytelling are being developed. Are you ready to take advantage of these changes? To

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

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

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.

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

Nutshell analysis of the “New Think for Old Publishers” panel at South by Southwest 2009: there was a not a single new think in the room. Let me be clear. Absolutely clear. Not one word spoken in that session, either from the panelists or from the audience, was new or innovative. (This is ironic given the fact that Penguin UK/Six to Start won two awards for the brilliant We Tell Stories project later that night. Congratulations to everyone involved, with a special shout-out to Jeremy Ettinghausen!) Let’s back up. The panel — fronting a room of about 300 people —

Used to be that working the d-book (digital book) beat was an easy gig. You could go years without any news of note. Lately, you can’t go to bed for fear of missing a story. Digital books might not be a major revenue item on the P&L, but they’re the hottest story in Pub Town. Competition is good for books, devices, retailers…and readers. (Benefit: the press, blogosphere, Twittersphere, and other spheres are talking about books. A lot.) Hot on the heels of the Kindle 2 and its (silly, pointless, and, frankly, reader-unfriendly) controversy came the long-rumored Amazon Kindle iPhone app.

As controversies go, the Authors Guild vs. Kindle didn’t last long. Last Tuesday, Guild President Roy Blount, Jr. was fuming about infringement of digital audio rights in the New York Times. By Friday afternoon Amazon announced that it would allow publishers to disable Kindle’s text-to-speech (TTS) feature on a title by title basis. Some fear that the Amazon caved too quickly to the Authors Guild’s demands. On the contrary, I think we will one day come to see this decision as a big win for Amazon and not the Guild. Amazon may have given up control over one feature, but