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

Hugh Howey Calls A Ceasefire

‘No Need To Come Out On Top’ It’s time to back off a bit on the arguments for self-publishing. In a classic example of “burying your lead” — along with a hatchet –the author-activist Hugh Howey quietly has signaled a stand-down to his supporters this week And he’s doing it with the note of generosity… Read More

Crowds and empowerment

Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power (Penguin Books in the UK, FSG in the US) has been with us for decades, but arrived too early to look at questions of what crowds can mean in publishing. And with the advent of the digital dynamic comes the idea — the ideal  — of crowd wisdom, of crowd leverage, of crowd… Read More

‘We Demand Parity’: Labor Unrest Among Amazon’s Authors

“Self-Published Authors Have Never Had a Level Playing Field On Amazon” If I were writing a television newscast script for an anchor on a US network right now, the first line of this story would be: Has Amazon finally gone too far? Fortunately, I’m not writing for the crowd that enjoys the network TV cliché-fest because… Read More