Can we float more indie boats?

With news of The Bookseller’s Independent Author Previews — an arrangement with the Barnes & Noble self-publishing platform Nook Press — self-publishing authors gain a store window on a long, virtual high street that’s swarming with competition. For those books and authors chosen to be featured, Independent Author Previews has the potential to be a game-changer. The new programme will see an average… Read More

Publishing innovation: #FutureChat recap

Pushback and pull forward…If there had been any doubt about the scepticism encountered around digital cookbooks, you could find some verification in The FutureBook.net community’s #FutureChat on publishing innovation. Alta Editions’ Chris McBride, in our walkup to the #FutureChat, had spoken of how the cookbook sector has seemed to lag some other parts of the books industry… Read More

BitLit announces HarperCollins ebook bundling pilot programme

In a potentially major gain for the ebook-bundling concept, BitLit today is announcing its first deal with a Big Five publisher. HarperCollins (US) has entered what is being described as a pilot programme with the Vancouver-based BitLit to offer discounted ebook editions of print books that readers already own. “This is not, obviously, HarperCollins’ full… Read More

If Hugh Howey Ran HarperCollins

At last year’s Digital Book World Conference & Expo (DBW), author Hugh Howey and his agent, Kristin Nelson, joined conference chair Mike Shatzkin onstage in a session about Howey’s newsmaking print-only deal with Simon & Schuster for the first book in his internationally bestselling Silo Saga, Wool.

Today, as #DBW2014′s workshops and associated conference sessions open the week’s events at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel, neither Howey nor Nelson are on the speakers’ roster. But they’re certainly speaking to power. And they’re being heard. Read More