Going…going… At what may well have been the last International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) conference, a proposed merger of IDPF and the World Wide Web Consortium cast a chill in Chicago. Read More
China’s Feng Tang: Translating the ‘Beijing, Beijing’ Of His Peers
‘Sexuality Is Almost My Trademark’ “Why didn’t you take your stupid Three Gun briefs home?” she asked. “They were clearly dry already, dry as they would ever get, but you didn’t take them back. Why? After looking at them all day, I would go out and dance all night.” What the author Feng Tang does… Read More
‘Putting Readers First’ At BEA: Gatekeepers, Curators, And ‘Too Many Books’
‘Readers Are The Power Brokers Who Matter Most’ Readers decide. Readers come first, as they are the primary filters. Imprints, choices, and selections should really mean something. Brand can’t be faked in this area. Publish fewer books; publish better books. The concept has begun gaining traction as it dawns on many of us that “discoverability”… Read More
‘The Overselling Of Self-Publishing': New Perspective
‘A Serious Epidemic Of Impatience’ Here in New York City where BookExpo America (BEA) is holding the focus of many in the traditional publishing establishment, a friend and I were finishing lunch at Café Luxembourg when the waiter approached. “I overheard you guys talking about publishing,” he said. “I wondered if you could give me any advice about… Read More
‘Publishing Goes Pop,’ Part 1: Can Reading Find True Fandom At BookCon?
‘There Was No Interest At BEA In…Readers’ BookExpo America (BEA) makes its annual appearance next week (27-29 May). It’s one of the world’s big-three publishing trade shows of the year, preceded in April by London Book Fair and followed in October by the largest of all, Frankfurt Book Fair. And while the show officially ends on Friday the 29th, it… Read More
'Smart layers' and resistance: Joe Wikert on the 'Dynamic Book'
Allowing publishers to ‘webbify’ the book At Books in Browsers, the annual conference produced by Peter Brantley, you hear the phrase “networked book” quite a bit. In its most reachy potential, the “networked book” is an exhilarating concept of information existing in its most connected state — whatever that state might be. No longer a thing but… Read More
Digital Book World’s Choir: Keynotes From Amazon, Apple, And All
The First Major Publishing Pilgrimage Of 2015 Publishing conferences are ritual performances. They are to the varied segments of publishing what morality plays are to the various forms of Christianity. They are narratives that are organised to demonstrate, emphasise, and reinforce the orthodoxy. Those are the words of one of our most dependable iconoclasts, Baldur… Read More