Amid ‘a strong populist allergy to elitism’ in Brexit, we also learn of the directors of a dozen nations’ trade fairs working together. Publishing, like the best of humanity, remains internationally engaged. Read More
2016 #FutureChat: Make a wish
How do you like 2016 so far? Not that long ago, in a #FutureChat not that far away, we asked you what you considered to have been the high points of 2015 for publishing. Today, we’re looking for something a little more (or less) than a prediction: What would you like to see become a… Read More
Why That Ebook May Cost More Than The Hardcover
It’s Not Over ‘Til The Big Dog Barks Indie publishing is still growing and it seems that established publishing is at a standstill. Mike Shatzkin’s column of August 5 may be the one in which we someday remember hearing a new sermon, the beginning of the endgame. But Shatzkin is not delivering a benediction yet: This… Read More
Can subscriptions take the heat?
‘A long day. Full of complete and utter nonsense.’ That’s the author Hugh Howey writing about Wednesday (1st July), when Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select payout structure officially changed from its original per-borrow plan to a per-page-read plan. Howey, no stranger to post-apoc poesy, was less than impressed with the run-for-your-life! reactions of many of his… Read More
Amazon And Its New KDP Select Per-Page Payments: Everybody Has To Swim For It Now
‘What This Means For Authors Is Debatable’ Yesterday’s news (15th June) that Amazon is changing its payout structure for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) lending scenarios — that’s Kindle Unlimited (KU) and the Kindle Owners Lending Library (KOLL) — has been met with somewhat muted reactions. And this is good to see. Some mature, prudent thinking is… Read More
Data-Dancing: How big is self-publishing?
‘Shock and awe.’ I’m here with the same question asked by my colleague, Bookseller editor Philip Jones in his companion piece to this one: How big is the market for self-published titles? “The question is a simple one for which there is no simple answer,” Jones writes. “In fact, there are lots of complicated answers.” We want your… Read More
#DBW15: #LaunchKids rolls out to the pad
A “take-up of digital books” that is “huge and growing” By day’s end Tuesday, the audience for Digital Book World’s daylong Launch Kids Conference will emerge into New York City’s notably chilly evening breezes — a -3C is as warm as it’s to get today here — fortified by the surveyed details of surely the most extensively studied… 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
At Frankfurt Book Fair: Where's Amazon?
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
‘We Demand Parity’: Labor Unrest Among Amazon’s Authors
“Self-Published Authors Have Never Had a Level Playing Field On Amazon” If I were writing a television newscast script for an anchor on a US network right now, the first line of this story would be: Has Amazon finally gone too far? Fortunately, I’m not writing for the crowd that enjoys the network TV cliché-fest because… Read More