My first sea journey was on the Cunard liner, the HMS Queen Elizabeth.Not the QEII, but her predecessor — longer than the HMS Queen Mary by 11 feet, I loved telling my friends. And as my family drove along the dock in France to reach the ship, I noticed a vast, dark brown wall beside us…thought nothing of it…some big warehouse… Read More
Music for Writers: Krakauer The Klezmer On 'Isaac The Blind'
Boys Who Have Seen Stonehenge Klezmer struck me as the voice of my grandmother in music. So even though I consider myself to be an atheist, I’m deeply culturally plugged in as a Jew. For me the “spiritual” aspect is a sense of this deep cultural connection that goes back thousands of years, and a sense… Read More
At Frankfurt Book Fair: Between creativity and commerce
Books are a business. Books are an art. And we’re all caught in the middle. Developing a creative relationship with money will make you more aware of that underlying pattern and will also surface your values, what’s most important to you in life. Surely, you’d say, this is the writing of one of our many… Read More
The 66th Frankfurt Book Fair: A Fast Arc Into Change
‘Beer swilling and book selling’ But he doesn’t stop there. When Frontier Project Partner Jason Allen Ashlock talks about why that international strategy consultancy goes to Frankfurt Book Fair, he makes it clear that his Global 500 clients need him there because of one word: innovation. Ironically, it’s precisely that bid for the future — innovation… Read More
Libiro, PODG, And A Flash Of Green
“The Libiro Platform Is Serving A Niche Market” It’s like the fabled “flash of green” said to be spotted at times just as the setting sun slips below the sea’s horizon: you’re never quite sure you’ve glimpsed the “indie-only audience.” You read mildly feverish references to these quicksilver consumers in blog comments, of course. Allusions… Read More
At Frankfurt Book Fair: Reaching for the "New Book"
If digital has taught us anything yet, it’s that its energies can blindside and reshape our work in publishing much more quickly than we expect at times, and in ways we inevitably wish we’d put more thought into earlier. Read More
At Frankfurt: Time for Publishing to Call a Truce?
The battle is not between self- and traditional publishers. It’s between books and the rest of the entertainment array, most of it digitally powered long before books were. It may be time we all got back on one team and started facing outward—at the real competition. Read More
At Frankfurt: The FutureBook's Innovation Awards Shortlist
Five high profile individuals in publishing based in the UK and US are shortlisted for the FutureBook Innovation Awards’ Most Inspiring Digital Publishing Person, an award sponsored by Frankfurt Book Fair. Read More
At Frankfurt: Sprint Beyond the Book
Even with Intel’s strong technical support and sponsorship–and with the caliber of the specialists gathered around the project’s table in Frankfurt–getting something that can be called a book in 72 hours is no mean feat. Read More
Japan’s Discover 21: In Frankfurt to Go Farther
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