By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson Editor-in-Chief ‘Business as Usual Appears To Be a Thing of the Past’ The European Parliamentary Research Service describes itself as the European Parliament’s “in-house research department and think tank.” It promises “independent, objective and authoritative analysis of, and research on, policy issues relating to the European Union.” The research documents the… Read More
In 2016, Adult Coloring Books: Only Half-Good For Publishing
Color Us Skeptical One of the things the book publishing industry produces best is confusion. Its gray areas (not unlike its Grey areas) are fogs of speculation, partial truths, gossip, and misty-eyed hindsight. Among the most beloved notions this year has been the idea that print books entered a renaissance in 2015. In bookseller’s dreams, consumers… Read More
China’s Feng Tang: Translating the ‘Beijing, Beijing’ Of His Peers
‘Sexuality Is Almost My Trademark’ “Why didn’t you take your stupid Three Gun briefs home?” she asked. “They were clearly dry already, dry as they would ever get, but you didn’t take them back. Why? After looking at them all day, I would go out and dance all night.” What the author Feng Tang does… Read More
'Smart layers' and resistance: Joe Wikert on the 'Dynamic Book'
Allowing publishers to ‘webbify’ the book At Books in Browsers, the annual conference produced by Peter Brantley, you hear the phrase “networked book” quite a bit. In its most reachy potential, the “networked book” is an exhilarating concept of information existing in its most connected state — whatever that state might be. No longer a thing but… Read More
Why We Don’t Read More? Are Books Still Our Best Bet?
What If Books Just Aren’t It Anymore? Why don’t we start with the assumption that social media and the web are taking over because people actually enjoy them and go from there? Baldur Bjarnason Baldur Bjarnason does seem to actually enjoy getting het up about things. And he’s good at it, too. People generally like… Read More
In And Around London Book Fair: Authors, IndieReCon And ALLi’s Third Anniversary
And Spectacular Weather As if heeding a request from London Book Fair (LBF) director Jacks Thomas, the sun flooded Olympia London with bright springtime light all week. We weary stand-and-stairs brats now head back to planes, trains, and waiting families. Smaller by design — Olympia is a markedly more compressed space than Earls Court — the transfer went remarkably… Read More
Oddest Book Title Of The Year: A Mercifully Short List
2014: ‘A Bumper Year For The Peculiar’ Publishing has a tendency to do things in waves. For example, certain conference organizers who shall remain nameless seem to take a reckless delight in scheduling their events much too close to other conferences and trade shows. This ensures that special bleary-vacant stare you see in the eyes… Read More
Josh Malerman's ‘Bird Box’ Named Horror Novel Of The Year
Also: Finalist For A Bram Stoker Award You write because you love reading, and you write horror because you believe in the monsters, you believe in the imagination, you believe in the dark. I BELIEVE IN THE DARK. Josh Malerman Josh Malerman has won This Is Horror’s Novel of the Year award blindfolded. Don’t take it… Read More
A New Architecture Of Algorithms: Could Trajectory Make Books ‘Discoverable’ At Last?
‘To Read More Books In A Similar Vein’ As the book publishing industry heads into its first major conference of the year this week — Digital Book World (hash it #DBW15 with us) in New York City — we learn now that we won’t be seeing one late-breaking major development on the program. And that’s not the… Read More
When ‘There Are No Words,’ I Can’t Even
One of the most perceptive regulars in #FutureChat, The FutureBook digital publishing community’s weekly live discussion, is Carla Douglas of BeyondPaperEditing.com in Kingston, Ontario. And in a recent doing of the discussion, Douglas pointed out that writing, while once among the most isolated and solitary of careers has been made one of the most social by digital… Read More