At Frankfurt: Can books find true fans?

Fanning the flames When asking Pan Macmillan’s Naomi Bacon to join us at Frankfurt Book Fair’s Business Club for a discussion of “hardcore fandom” and books in our “Hug the Alien” series of events, I hadn’t counted on getting video in the bargain. But we got it, and it’s good stuff.   Bacon, with the… Read More

Enhanced ebooks and steel filing cabinets

  Funny how #FutureChat can change your mind. Camille LaGuire, whose beret-ed avatar is familiar to many of us in our weekly discussion from The Bookseller and FutureChat, started Friday’s chat by announcing: Not sure I have much to contribute about the Future of Enhanced books discussion on #FutureChat today. By later in the day,… Read More

50% Royalties On Ebooks, 5-Year Licenses: New Publisher Canelo

  It’s the Canelic Arrival of the new digital press created by three familiar players in the UK market, publishing director Michael Bhaskar, m.d. Iain Millar, and technology director Nick Barreto. The fledgling company’s first three titles release today, the work of authors John Gapper, Chris Lloyd, and Martin Davies. Writing about the new effort in January, my… Read More

Is A Fan A ‘Quantified Reader’?

Michael Bhaskar: ‘Fans are critical to what it means to be a publisher today’ Historically, publishing meant amplification. “Making stuff available,” Canelo Publishing’s Michael Bhaskar told our Berlin audience. Putting something into print was enough to amplify it. But actually, now, on the Internet, when everything can be made available automatically, simply having stuff available is no longer… Read More

‘Publishing Goes Pop,’ Part 1: Can Reading Find True Fandom At BookCon?

‘There Was No Interest At BEA In…Readers’ BookExpo America (BEA) makes its annual appearance next week (27-29 May). It’s one of the world’s big-three publishing trade shows of the year, preceded in April by London Book Fair and followed in October by the largest of all, Frankfurt Book Fair. And while the show officially ends on Friday the 29th, it… 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

Eyes Wide Open: Can Canelo Cross The Coals?

If Anybody Should Know This, It’s Publishing People Enough disrupting! Disrupting is the unthinking mantra of technology companies desperate to carve a niche. – Michael Bhaskar During the FutureBook Hack in London last June, Faber Press’ Henry Volans said to me that it’s interesting that “publishing has taken the digital disruption very hard.” As it… Read More