Voices Less Heard: Must Publishing Always Take Sides?

Something that is often lost in a lot of these conversations about money is that economics isn’t just about money, but about time. It is that same economic equation that prevents me from going the self publishing route at this point in my career. There are already so very many demands on a traditionally published… Read More

Giving Voice to Innovation: Add Yours in Our #FutureChat

Friday at 4 p.m. London time, 11 a.m. New York time, join us for a conversation on Twitter, hashtagged #FutureChat – we’d love to have you with us. This is the author Steven Pressfield in his podcast interview (with transcription) this week with author Joanna Penn: “Hachette was the original publisher of The War of Art, and I would get 35… Read More

Pan Macmillan’s Lloyd at FutureBook Hack: “Ask what you can do for readers”

“I think we haven’t done the great things yet.” Are you an author? If so, would it surprise you to know that that line came from a publisher? It did, and Sara Lloyd, Pan Macmillan’s digital and communications director, was set on making sure that the participant-hackers of the first-ever FutureBook Hack understood that she… Read More

FutureBook Hackers at work: Did we tell them enough?

As the mists rise off the beanbags here at the Roberts Building on the campus of University College London, the FutureBook Hack has about 19 hacker-participants at work. FutureBook-pink blankets still cover some shoulders. The smell of breakfast being set up is encouraging. It’s early morning. More teammates will join these. The message goes out:… Read More

#PorterMeets The Bookseller's Alice Ryan

When everyone sits down to the midnight feast this weekend at FutureBook Hack in the University College London’s Roberts Building, they can toast, among others, one Alice Ryan. The conference and community manager for The Bookseller is certainly managing some major community now, a collective of more than 100 developers, designers, entrepreneurs, engineers, coders, programmers,… Read More

FutureBook Hack's invocation: The Rev. Matthew Cashmore

 Blackwell’s digital director Matthew Cashmore is going to make some Anglican parish a very fine priest. “I get criticised,” he told the #FutureBookHack’s gathered assembly Saturday morning, “every time I introduce a hack day and tell people, ‘You can change the world with what you do this weekend.” Seated at tables and on beanbags, standing… Read More

Gearing up for #FutureBookHack

For all the experience Blackwell’s Matthew Cashmore brings to his production of The Bookseller’s FutureBook Hack on Saturday and Sunday, neither he nor anyone else knows exactly what creative benefits to expect from the weekend. Surprise is a key element of these events. Organizers try not to restrict expectations because, as Rick Joyce of Perseus Books Group puts… Read More