‘Beware blanket dismissal.’ All endeavors need innovators in this changing environment. #BabyBathwater Ron Martinez’ cautionary comments arrived on the #FutureChat hashtag after our weekly live session had closed on Friday. But his point is a good one. To put together his tweets in sequence; Empathize a moment. Innovators are Promethean: may bring a benefit, but… Read More
Publishers' Forum in Berlin: 'Reconstructing Publishing'
The 2015 edition of Publishers’ Forum opened Monday (27th April) in Berlin with a determined tagline and programming to match: “How to Reconstruct Publishing: Competing Visions, Channels, and Audiences.” Produced by German publishing software maker Klopotek, the day was launched by welcoming comments from that company’s Klaus-Peter Stegen and by Global e-Book co-author Rüdiger Wischenbart (pictured), who is in… Read More
'No bookshop is an island': ALLi launches #Authors4Bookstores
At IndieReCon: Launching #Authors4Books Standing in this beautiful new Foyles store to launch ALLi’s Authors For Bookstores campaign, for a moment we can fool ourselves that reports of the decline of bricks-and-mortar bookshops are greatly exaggerated. The Alliance of Independent Authors’ (ALLi) Debbie Young (pictured)took to the floor of Friday’s IndieReCon event in London shortly before we… Read More
Fat startup: Eric Ries and his Lean Startup programme go wide
Eric Ries asked for $135,000 on Kickstarter. He got $588,903. That’s not lean. And Ries, a man with a ready sense of humor, cracks up at the suggestion that he’s doing too well to fit into his famous “Lean Startup” gig anymore. “Here’s the thing,” he says. “When you launch a Kickstarter campaign, there’s something great… Read More
From London Book Fair to an IndieReckoning
Where do we find authors this year, as London Book Fair closes? (This story was written originally as a walkup to the #FutureChat of Friday 17th April.) Authors have long attended book fairs, of course, primarily for reasons of publicity or to meet their international publishers—but now they come to do business and to be… Read More
At London Book Fair, 'Digital Minds' talk subscriptions
‘Busting the myths’ might have been more than we could expect. But in the subscriptions panel at the Publishing for Digital Minds conference Monday here at Olympia London, we had a reminder of last week’s #FutureChat on subscriptions. You can look back on the conversation in that #FutureChat in #FutureChat recap: All-you-can-guess about ebook subscriptions. Mofibo’s… Read More
All-you-can-guess about subscriptions
Publishing can be forgiven for its mixed response to the ebook-subscription issue. Not only does the all-you-can-read construct for selling books run contrary to traditions in bookselling — and reading — but even some of our sister media disciplines, much deeper into their experience with subscriptions, are still trying to parse the effects of similar models. Just… Read More
Are publishers getting the #authorsay message?
The real irony here, it turns out, is that it wasn’t the publishers calling the questions: 75 percent of responding authors said they have never been asked for feedback from their publisher 7 percent said that publishers pay writers well 32 percent said that the prestige of having a deal with a traditional publisher was important to them… Read More
Self-publishing Jasinda Wilder in 7-figure deal with PRH's Berkley
Jasinda Wilder is the latest of the “indie bestsellers” to achieve a major traditional publishing deal, in this case for three books. The announcement is being made this morning (6th April) by Penguin Random House’s Berkley Books in New York. In a prepared statement, Berkley vice-president and executive editor Cindy Hwang, said: “Jasinda Wilder has been one of… Read More
IfBookThen in Milan: Soaring past 'book' to 'then'
“It was easy to wonder where was the book in IfBookThen,” as Lucio Braganolo writes at ApogeOnline. And that was precisely the point, the purpose, and the pride of this “post-publishing” conference in springtime Milan. Unique in an already-busy season of international conferences, BookRepublic’s IfBookThen 2015 was devised by c.e.o. Marco Ferrario to get right past what… Read More