‘An Ever-Widening Industry Consensus’ Today, most of Germany’s main publishing forces are, or soon will be, hard-DRM-free. This morning, we had the first reports from Buchreport: Random House Germany has joined the other leading publishers there, citing “an ever-widening industry consensus.” At The Bookseller, we have Anja Sieg’s report here. As of 1st October, Verlagsgruppe Random House has announced… Read More
When the page is broken: Who writes the books?
‘New Kinds of Authors, New Kinds of Books’: Four of them While it’s hardly the norm to introduce a book to you at its end, that’s actually a good place to start in talking about the author, designer and developer Peter Meyers’ Breaking the Page: Transforming Books and the Reading Experience. Scheduled to chair a… Read More
Is 'out of print' running out of time?
Never being ‘out of print’ is not good news You can’t self-publish. Because you can’t get your rights back. And your book is nowhere to be seen. Kill the entire outmoded concept of “out of print.” Instead, the contract should define when book rights are being “inadequately exploited” and therefore available for reversion to the… Read More
Can digital community support writing, really?
Not unlike climate change, it’s something that digital-age writers worry about, but can’t nail down. I’m not sure what effect the accepting warmth of digital communities has on our literature. I don’t think encouraging people can make bad writing suddenly appeal to the masses. Are the communities going to start getting the same blame that self-publishing… Read More
Enhanced ebooks and steel filing cabinets
Funny how #FutureChat can change your mind. Camille LaGuire, whose beret-ed avatar is familiar to many of us in our weekly discussion from The Bookseller and FutureChat, started Friday’s chat by announcing: Not sure I have much to contribute about the Future of Enhanced books discussion on #FutureChat today. By later in the day,… 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
Gray Areas: ‘The Elements’ Of Good Book Apps
‘Programmers Need To Be Treated As Top Talent, Just Like Authors’ A funny thing happened on the way to digital books and ebook enhancement: We forgot that we knew what we know. Theodore Gray At the end of last week, we published an articulate essay at The Bookseller’s The FutureBook by developer and designerTheodore Gray. In… Read More
Two New Efforts In Publishing Diversity: ‘Learning From Each Other’s Narratives’
‘There Are So Many Reasons To Write’ We’ve joined the global conversation on the intersection of race and writing. But is it enough? These viewpoints echo that of Zed Books’ Crystal Mahey-Morgan, who told me in an interview for The Bookseller less than a year ago: “We need to move beyond rhetoric and good… Read More
#WDC15: Writer's Digest's Annual Conference
Hundreds of authors head into the ballrooms of New York City’s Roosevelt Hotel at Madison and East 45th this week for Writer’s Digest’s Annual Conference. There, many of them will woo literary agents in the confab’s huge Pitch Slam. And this year, the savviest of them will know exactly what moves those agents are looking for, thanks to… Read More
1.1 Million Copies Later: Go Mock A Watchman
‘I Told You So’ In under a week, Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman has sold more than 1.1 million copies in the States, according to HarperCollins, as reported by Sarah Weinman at Publishers Lunch. Don’t worry, there are 2.2 million more copies for you to buy, we’re told. In the UK, my associates at The Bookseller… Read More