Coming to DBW: What Does Author Earnings Say to the Industry?

Ahead of his or her presentation at Digital Book World (#DBW16) on March 9, a look at “Data Guy’s” sales-estimate project, Author Earnings, by Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives. Read More

Authors United’s Divisive Stand on Amazon

Authors Unlimited’s 3-hour event at New America warned that Amazon’s market position will cause “long-term effects on the global book trade.” Read More

Los Angeles Public Library and SELF-e ‘Foster a Community of Local Authorship’

By Porter Anderson / @Porter_Anderson ‘Connecting Our Local Authors With Readers’ A leader in creative-community relations, Los Angeles Public Library’s (LAPL) adoption of SELF-e’s capabilities is being watched by other library systems as a model. And who better to ask what it means to finally be able to acquire and promote local authors than the… Read More

#AuthorDay: What divides us?

Of “trade” and “the Trade” Today we’re making the “programme reveal” for the inaugural FutureBook Author Day conference (#AuthorDay), which is set for Monday, 30th November. It’s on the 30th at the 30th, 30 Euston Square, headquarters of the Royal College of General Practitioners, we’ll all be healthier for it. Our programme should appear, if… Read More

Setting A Compass: Those FutureBook Manifestos In A Storm-Tossed Industry

Sinking Into The Pubslush Years into publishing’s encounter with the digital dynamic, it’s  not as if anything is holding still, is it? A kind of heaving grace is about the best you can find on some days in this deeply shaken, tech-swept industry. Every other week, my colleague Jane Friedman and I find ourselves looking… Read More

Get Porter Alerts: Publishing Coverage On The Fly

Know When The Tweets Take Off Publishing’s conference and trade-show events stack up like the cities of Troy, one atop the other, right? It’s always springtime for publishing somewhere, and who can keep up? Now, you can: Let my boarding passes be your guide. Sign up at my site for my free newsletter, Porter Alerts!  By having these notices… Read More

Could imprints get publishers' readers in a row?

Join us each Friday for our live #FutureChat with The FutureBook digital community at 4 p.m. London (GMT), 5 p.m. Rome, 11 a.m. New York, 8 a.m. Los Angeles. You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it. Imprints are done. Right? Maybe not. Imprints are all around us — and in fact growing in number and importance.… Read More

#FutureChat recap: Agents of change

Illuminating the landscape Getting a piece of the action has not, historically, been the way literary agents portrayed their services. Maybe at the breakfast table. Or over a quiet Campari. Rarely for the record. And despite several years of rapid digital-driven experimentation and a growing number of “agent-assisted” approaches to publication, the idea that the… Read More

Perceived differences between 'us' and 'them'

“More trust in your staff not to be numpties.” Only if you lingered for a bit after #FutureChat — or looked back later to see the stream — might you have spotted that comment from Suw Charman-Anderson. And not much earlier, Victoria Noe had said, “It’s like a generation gap.” She was referring to the… Read More

Kickstarter issues its annual greeting card

‘Three years ago Rebecca’s project got a pledge from Scott. This year they got married.’ That’s from Kickstarter’s look-back in handkerchieves at 2014. My associate at The Bookseller Charlotte Eyre has ably written up the attractive annual report that Kickstarter creates to regale us with how well things have gone. Her story, Kickstarter publishing projects raised… Read More