by Porter Anderson

Here’s to Publishing: Perspectives With Context

‘Consumers Do Not Need Help’ It will surprise few who know me that I mention wine in my opening commentary as Editor-in-Chief here at Publishing Perspectives.  Ever fond of the grape, I was drawn to Catavino founder Ryan Opaz’s recent piece at Medium, On Wine. A Tragedy. The key message for wine makers, Opaz opines,… Read More

by Porter Anderson

Data-Dancing: How big is self-publishing?

‘Shock and awe.’ I’m here with the same question asked by my colleague, Bookseller editor Philip Jones in his companion piece to this one: How big is the market for self-published titles?  “The question is a simple one for which there is no simple answer,” Jones writes. “In fact, there are lots of complicated answers.” We want your… Read More

by Porter Anderson

The winter of our discontent with the ISBN

ISBN: Not much more traction than the first snowfall on London I’m just glad Amazon & B&N do reveal overall sales ranks so we can measure their mix of sales that way. Other retailers, including Apple, do not, limiting us to only estimating the very top books in a limited number of categories on those… Read More

by Porter Anderson

AuthorEarnings: ISBN On Ice!

Everything’s Coming Up Indie. Right?  As slippery as the business of publishing-industry statistics is, the author Hugh Howey and his unnamed associate referred to as Data Guy have now given us a year of AuthorEarnings.com reports. This is a good thing. Despite Howey’s detractors and some of their misgivings, the AuthorEarnings series of interpretive essays have… Read More

by Porter Anderson

'Grace notes for ebooks': A new Trajectory for discoverability

When the machines read your book The Bookseller on the stands in London this morning reports that Bowker — the ProQuest-owned US ISBN agency and publishing research firm — is in final talks for a partnership with a company called Trajectory. The aim at Bowker is to offer authors and small publishers a new way to generate… Read More

by Porter Anderson

Who Has Time For Publishing’s 'Long Tail'?

‘Sales Are Down For Most Authors’ Sales are down for most authors. You don’t see blog posts about it or tweets, but it’s a reality. And the reason is simple: there’s more content out there than ever before. That’s the self-publishing  author-turned-publisher Bob Mayer in a blog post at Digital Book World (DBW), The Content… Read More

by Porter Anderson

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

by Porter Anderson

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