Booksquare

I remain bemused by authors who insist, when refusing to grant ebook rights, that their works are meant to be experienced in a certain (bound and printed) format. It’s a bit quaint, when you think about it, that they would impose their own vision of art on the beholder — it’s a bit like Michelangelo […]

Here we are in 2008 and Chelsea Green, a small publisher, took a chance. It thought, “Hmm, offer an exclusive window to Amazon for our new book on Barack Obama, or choose broad distribution? We choose Amazon, and Amazon alone.” Which, of course, angered all the other booksellers in the world, the booksellers who see […]

Last night, I had dinner with the digital team from Harlequin — one of the most, if not the most, forward looking publishers when it comes to migrating to a digital future — and came away feeling positive about the mindset of the industry. Today, I’m feeling like we’ve taken two steps back. The fine […]

Associated Press headline: “Apple sells 1 million iPhones in first 3 days”. Add to that the six million phones already in the hands of customers (all of whom, I should note, chose to update their software…right when I was updating mine). Doing some quick, nearly caffeine-free math, that’s 7 million web-enabled, application-ready phones in the […]

Let us begin with synopses and cover copy: both are fine bits of information that only begin to convey the character of a book (although cover copy sometimes lies!). These snapshots of information are nice, but, well, not prime examples of great writing about books. Publishers are bizarrely hands-off when it comes to talking about […]

Wow, usually it’s the government dumping news on Friday; you don’t expect it from Microsoft, but here you have it: they’re discontinuing their Live Book Search project. Effective, well, now. They say: Today we informed our partners that we are ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and that both sites will […]

It has been suggested that I am in love with new concepts, new media. It’s true. I am absolutely in love with “new” media models (as opposed to new media models, though I am very fond of those as well). As an old media person who has witnessed successes and failures and inefficiencies, I am […]

There are sacred cows in publishing. Lots and lots of sacred cows. You have the “smell of books” people. You have “the publishing business model ain’t broke” people. And you have the “advances are divine rights” people. Suggest that advances are not written-in-stone obligations on the part of publishers and you’re considered naive. Ill-informed. Nutso. […]

It is no secret that I hate publisher websites. The vast majority of them can be best described as “suffers from multiple personality disorder”. And I’m not just talking about the fact that publishers can’t figure out who the target audience of their site is. Visiting a publisher site means being subjected to bad design, […]

I have a serious question for you. What if thousands of kids were reading and writing and nobody bothered to notice? I swear it’s happening. We are raising a nation of readers, writers, artists, and even activists. Better, we are raising a nation of communicators. Now we have nurture and protect this new wonder. I’m […]