When The Medium’s Message Gets Rough It was an odd turnabout in the annual Nielsen Children’s Conference. Led by Kristen McLean—among the most respected people in the business of quantifying and evaluating the young person’s reading scene—the conference was a crackling success. Smartly produced at New York’s pristine Convene Center in Lower Manhattan on a… Read More
Now booking seats: FutureBook's #AuthorDay
‘Respective strengths’ To look at some of the major news about authors last week, you’d think we might have titled our new conference “Show Me The Money.” Between the US Authors Guild’s release of its first survey since 2009 of author income, “The Wages of Writing,” and Hugh Howey and Data Guy’s delivery of the latest AuthorEarnings… Read More
Is this the triumph of print?
‘Digital is now as big a part of this industry as print’ There is a belief (and relief) now among some booksellers that the ebook “threat” is over. I have heard similar talk from senior buyers at supermarkets, who tell me that they have seen e-reader buyers switching to print books. So writes my good colleague… Read More
The Authors Guild Survey’s Self-Selected Sample: More Fuel On The Fire?
First, The Bad News While some parts of the Authors Guild’s survey of writers’ income had been released earlier, the writer-advocacy organization has now produced its full report. The news, while not shocking to anyone near the publishing business, is nevertheless troubling. Some initial results, and then a bit of discussion follows. Writing-related income of… Read More
AuthorEarnings: Brought To You By Us, Your Breathless Media
My Hype Is Better Than Your Hype Sometimes it seems that almost no one in the publishing industry can deliver a message without a sticky gloss of agenda-laden hype on it. The latest AuthorEarnings report, prepared by the author Hugh Howey and his technologist colleague known as “Data Guy,” is a good case in point. Rather than opening… Read More
This Week’s Nielsen’s Children’s Book Summit: Research Over Guesswork
When Your Reader Is Not Your Customer Most kids aren’t choosing and buying their own books. Parents are the ones at the cash register, right? Of course right. But think about the marketing challenge: are you trying to reach the kid? Or the parent? Don’t be too quick to think you know the answer. As publishing… Read More
Crowdfunding As An Antidote To Vanity Publishing: Colborne and Pubslush Join Forces
‘All The Backend Experience’ “The conversation was along the lines of ‘Pubslush has the marketing smarts that Colborne needs, and Colborne has all the backend experience that Pubslush is short on.’” Toronto’s Greg Ioannou was one of the very few people not surprised last week, as news got around that his company and author-crowdfunder Pubslush… Read More
Could Amazon Exclusivity Be Good For The Future Of eBooks?
‘The Absolute Best Experience For Readers’ Here’s an argument we don’t hear frequently for the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select programs. I’m ensuring the best possible reader experience with ebooks. This is the soon-to-be-seafaring author Hugh Howey, who says that there’s something more important than the doubling of his overall income since Amazon instituted per-page payouts… Read More
Reader Analytics: Not All Authors Want To Know
Your Soul Vs. Data? When Jellybooks’ Andrew Rhomberg wrote at Digital Book World recently about publishers having a Fear of Data in an age of digital metrics, I thought that taking that issue to authors would be a worthwhile exercise. And I tried it out on some trusted colleagues by making it the “Provocations in… Read More
#MusicForWriters: A Ravishing Fever Dream From Snider And Bellows
‘Ghostly Chorus’ Childhood trauma is such alluring material for writers. It’s also fiendishly hard to render it with real impact. Kids’ frights tend to fall apart in the wry view of adult hindsight. As a friend once said to me with a shrug, everything is hell on wheels when you’re little. When it works, however,… Read More