From a new assessment of author services by the Alliance of Independent Authors to an AuthorEarnings talk by Hugh Howey, a book cover chat with C.J. Lyons’ artist, an explanation of the SELF-e library project and more, BEA’s Author Hub is humming. The Author Hub at BookExpo America (BEA) is the annual event’s first effort to follow its… Read More
When Retailers & Publishers Collide: Who Gets Hurt?
Has anybody told the readers about this? You know, the customers? What if they were brand-savvy enough to know what they’re missing when a contract dispute stalls out the shipping of their favorite author? What if we tell them? If readers were aware of who published what and, in the current example, became incensed that… Read More
Publishing's "Metamorphoses" at Klopotek 2014's Berlin Forum
BERLIN, Germany — For “ten years I have been in charge of this conference,”Helmut von Berg told the Publishers’ Forum assembly here Tuesday evening. “And I wondered what changed in that time.” The director of Klopotek, the publishing software company, von Berg paused with the timing that comes of a decade’s practice at conference-closing speeches. Then: “I had no immediate… Read More
The Muse's Town Hall: Looking for Literary in Digital Places
Eve Bridburg: “I don’t see online communities growing up around literary authors and books in quite the same way I see it happening for genre fiction and fan fiction. Where is the larger discovery platform for literary fiction? Will publishers keep publishing it if there aren’t readers? Where is the curation going to come from? Who… Read More
The Muse’s Town Hall: Jane Friedman on Literary in Digital Times
Jane Friedman: “Thoughtful, intelligent ‘literary’ work is doing quite well digitally if you step away from book-length or novel publishing and into journalism-driven or nonfiction-driven publishing…I wish there were a community aspect to it (maybe there will be), which the literary world needs. Where’s the literary person’s version of Wattpad? Does that even make sense? I’m… Read More
As London Book Fair Looms: Debates Natural and Not
It can almost seem you’re hearing people talk about different industries…as if our own debates inside the industry! the industry! were the point…as if digital weren’t bigger than publishing…as if what’s at stake here were really only a glowing plastic e-reader vs. a gorgeous hardcover print book. Read More
Hi Opens to the Public: Writing for Moderns
Craig Mod’s frequently gorgeous and always interesting online initiative called Hi is rolling out to the public. Mod’s discussion of his idea and intent has sometimes used the phrase “narrative mapping,” something that has taken on actionable reality in the intervening months. The idea is that people all over the world offer imagery and text from someplace on Earth. Read More
Short Reads: The Rooster Crows, Very Briefly
If one more person announces that Dickens worked in serial form, I’m probably going to have to be physically restrained. We know. In fact, we’ve known all along. Don’t tell us again that Dickens did serials, okay? Okay. Read More
London Author Fair’s Debut: Change Agents
The inaugural #LAF14 was attended by close to 300 people and presented with knees-up professionalism at Covent Garden’s Hospital Club — a daylong journey’s sophisticated tour of entrepreneurial authors’ interests. Read More
Ian K. Ellard: Profit-Sharing Authors
“The essay,” Ian K. Ellard said, “imagines a world where advances are rare, and the bulk of book publishing is done on a revenue-share basis. The way it works at the moment, an author starts with 100-percent stake in their book, and sells that stake, often 100 percent of it, to a publishing house for an advance. That used to be a good deal–publishers offered the only route to market, and were prepared to pay a wholesale price for the product. But now that barrier has come down, the author has more options for bringing their product to customers—they decide how to spend their 100 percent.” Read More