“There is absolutely no correlation among advances paid or sales or price or buzz or anything and talent. If there were, Paris Hilton would not have received a dime from a publisher.” Industry specialist Kassia Krozser looks at the crisis in quality and pricing amid the digital upheaval in publishing today. This and a range of other issues from publishing. Read More
Writing on the Ether | JaneFriedman.com
This week in Writing on the Ether: Literature and long lines / The AWP conference sits down in Chicago … Open sorcery / A call for industry-class conferences (not more AWP-level confabs) for authors … Amazon / Some embrace it, others run from it … plus book piracy, Google, Apple, reading, and Virginia Woolf (this week’s Last Gas). Read More
Writing on the Ether | JaneFriedman.com
Can real sense ever be made of the digital disruption of publishing — mothership retailers hovering in cyberspace over flocks of woolgathering independents in pastures below — if the core industry’s relationship with writers isn’t addressed? During discussions of the new incident between Amazon and the Independent Publishers Group (more on that below), I’ve been reminded by our colleague, Andrew Rhomberg in London, of the phrase “creative destruction” from economic theory. Read More
Writing on the Ether | JaneFriedman.com
ToC: Techno-calities: Locution, locution, locution. In its sixth year, the Tools of Change Conference — just closed in New York City — easily held its own as one of publishing’s two great confabs of a stressful year, the other being last month’s Digital Book World Conference + Expo. And when it comes to locution, ye shall know them by how they say “data.” Read More
Writing on the Ether | JaneFriedman.com
If the Digital Book World Conference helped prepare our souls for the coming travail, the battle now is joined by reinforcements, in the form of the annual Tools of Change Conference (#TOCcon). In ToC we trust. Read More
Writing on the Ether | JaneFriedman.com
Even in the Battle for the Showroom, odd alliances may already be springing up. Barnes and Noble has issued a powerful condemnation of Amazon, claiming the Internet retailer has “undermined the industry as a whole and prevented millions of customers from having access to content…as they continue to pull content off the market for their own self interest.” But in an unexpected turn, authors may be in the first wave B&N has to fight. Read More
Writing on the Ether | JaneFriedman.com
There’s something about the stance of writers in the publishing community right now that isn’t quite what it should be. I don’t have to get too specific in describing this. It’s never more evident than at this time of year when two of our biggest conferences are choreographed to pass in the night. Read More
Writing on the Ether | JaneFriedman.com
Your hot seat awaits at the Writer’s Digest Conference and Digital Book World Conference in New York. Not since Margaret Mitchell fanned those other flames has the industry gathered in so superheated a salon of controversies for the kickoff of its annual ConfabWorld season. Can’t be there? No problem. Keep these hashtags handy: #wdc12 and #dbw12. We’ll be sure some smoke gets in your eyes. Read More
Writing on the Ether | JaneFriedman.com
Today, it wouldn’t hurt our congregation of publishing to catch a church-window reflection of how we look engaging in one industry-wide panic after the next. Our energetic knees-up exercises of feverish fellowship seem so frequent nowadays that we might as well schedule them. Plus: Why “The Joy of Books” is joyless cuteness. Read More
Writing on the Ether | JaneFriedman.com
In chatting with some year-enders as we watched that ball ex machina descend in Times Square to haul us all out of the mess that was 2011, it became clear that many authors today see the digitization of things as just such a handy lift, a chariot swinging low to carry us home (where the readers are) — to deliver everyone from the gatekeeping Eumenides of old publishing and into the stage-center jig-fest of DIY abandon. Mickey Rooney, that ancient thespian, called this “let’s put on a show!” Read More