If you walked into publishing right now and stopped one of us to ask, “What’s the healthiest, happiest part of the business to get into?” — the answer you well might get is “children’s books!” The exclamation point would be there, yes. They’re a generally exuberant lot these days, the children’s books folks. And why not? Thanks to Charlotte Eyre’s… Read More
Can we float more indie boats?
With news of The Bookseller’s Independent Author Previews — an arrangement with the Barnes & Noble self-publishing platform Nook Press — self-publishing authors gain a store window on a long, virtual high street that’s swarming with competition. For those books and authors chosen to be featured, Independent Author Previews has the potential to be a game-changer. The new programme will see an average… Read More
Torchin' For Books Data
Nobody came forward to say we have too much books data. The fact that we cannot see the size and shape of the publishing industry today, however, strikes some as more problematic than others. And shortly after The FutureBook.net community’s #FutureChat on the problem of missing data, I was reminded once more of how many folks… Read More
Reedsy: Bending into digital self-publishing
In the graphics for Reedsy, you sometimes spot “cattails,” as we call them in the sea islands of South Carolina. Reeds. Thus one can go into an interview here hoping that the cutesy name for this new company isn’t a misspelling of “read.” Big relief: “The name is meant to refer to reeds,” says chief operating officer Ricardo… Read More
A Dim View Of Missing Books Data
Got a light?… Just as The Bookseller’s Philip Jones was aptly saying that the publishing industry is “looking at its market by candlelight,” I was reminded that, in fact, book publishing isn’t the only industry suffering this problem: Amazon never releases sales figures for any of the hardware it builds, but that isn’t stopping others from making their best guesses… Read More
Applauding gaps in 'retail stonewalling'
What might have been an hour or so of complaint and commiseration became — in the tweeting hands of The FutureBook community — something more hopeful and more nuanced than some would have predicted. Our topic, ‘Retail stonewalling’ and Amazon sightings in bookstores, took its phrase from Amazon Publishing author Tim Ferriss. And its starting point was The… Read More
'Retail stonewalling' and Amazon sightings in bookstores
Oil and water…The general pattern, of course, has been simple: many bookshops, objecting to Amazon’s effects on the industry, have declined to carry books from Amazon Publishing imprints. A kind of major-player blessing on independent stores has been provided by Barnes & Noble’s corporate stance, announced January 2012, against Amazon Publishing books. So frustrated with the situation was Amazon… Read More
Multi-track issues: #FutureChat recap
After our good #FutureChat exchange about the recent protests of Amazon’s negotiating tactics, one of our FutureBook community members noticed that the #UK’s “Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store” ranking seemed to be top-heavy with a group of Amazon Publishing titles. In fact, these titles doing so well on the list were all books published by… Read More
Infographic: eBooks advance in Dutch-language market's Q2
“There is no flattening out yet over here in ebook sales” …“Our country is quite unique in the diversity of its ebook landscape,” says Timo Boezeman, a sales account manager in the digital division of the Dutch distributor CB Logistics. Based in Culemborg in the central Netherlands, this 140-year-old company (formerly Centraal Boekhuis) — operating… Read More
Parallel protests of Amazon
Pitchforks United: The protests expand… As I write this, the number of signatories to the new German-language offener brief an Amazon, open letter to Amazon, has jumped by nearly 200 in a single day. There were 1,188 yesterday. There are 1,354 today. Melissa Eddy at The New York Times takes care to point out to us that those supporters include… Read More