Discover 21’s Yumiko Hoshiba says that the import-export gap isn’t due only to a need for translation but also, by tradition, to the fact that the Japanese industry has been thought to have “all the readers it needed.” Read More
At Frankfurt Book Fair's CONTEC: Content, Technology…and Questions
The conference name CONTEC 2013 is created from “the marriage of content and technology,” according to the event’s programming director Kat Meyer. Read More
CONTEC: Self-Publishing's Implications and Impact
As Dr. Florian Geuppert of Books on Demand in Hamburg tells us from his own company’s seven-nation survey: “We have about 25,000 authors…these authors are in Germany, yes, but also in Austria, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. So we asked them what is their motivation? We also wanted to compare the different countries and see where self-publishing really is. Because the movement (toward self-publishing) is broad in Europe, but not at the level of what we see in the US. It will probably get there.” Read More
Do All Conference Roads Lead to Writers Now?
By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson Ether for Authors: Do All Conference Roads Lead to Writers Now? [dropcap style=”flat” size=”5″]T[/dropcap]he centricity of the entrepreneurial writer in publishing circles still comes and goes as a focus these days. We’re in the early days, yes. But Jon Fine’s line about starting with the author as customer and working backward… Read More
What Happens When Everybody's a Critic?
Even on the consumer-review level of a site like Goodreads, the presumably smart aspect of a community inclusive both of the writers and their consumers, the readers, is new and evolving. Read More
Can You Sell eBooks on the Half Shell?
I’ll be glad when more details come out about compensation for content owners. I’m also interested to see what a one-price buffet plan does, if anything, to our culture of reading. Until we know more, we just don’t know what’s inside the new ebook subscription service called Oyster. Read More
Are These the Dog Days of the Disruption?
In Publishing Perspectives’ Ether for Authors, Porter Anderson looks at wry digital exhaustion, agents demystifying their craft, and adult YA readers. Read More
And Would You Just Save the Libraries, Too, Please?
In his overview of the week’s web buzz, Porter Anderson looks at an authors-for-libraries effort, DRM debates, Ewan Morrison’s provocations, and more. Read More
Are You Marketing Your Books to "Adjacent Fans"?
In Writing on the Ether, Porter Anderson looks at a marketing phrase from Peter McCarthy, “adjacent fans.” What could this offer to entrepreneurial authors? Read More
Does Publishing Need More Gatekeepers?
In Ether for Authors, Porter Anderson looks at the NY Times’ wistful call for ‘more gatekeepers ’ for authors; copyright contentions; and ‘thought verbs. Read More