As Laura Miller at Salon opens her own reflection on this, “Is the Literary World Elitist?”, she rightly explains that Eleanor Catton—responding to an instance of reader indignation at writer’s use of a 50-cents word—”treats the reader’s ire as a symptom of the creeping consumerist attitude in our response to literature.” Read More
Publishing, Between Revolution and Revolt
Follow that burning fuse. It runs between these two curiously different words. We may need to think about which of them is closer to us. Revolution. Pretty comfortable. Thanks to Madison Avenue, we nowadays say “revolution” for every change, from geopolitical alliances to bathroom tissue. Revolt. Not so comfortable. More acute. Something or someone feels out of control. It’s an uprising, not a downfalling. Dangerous. Read More
Is Self-Publishing a Flying Leap?
Ideas of how much support a good author needs are among the highest-visibility differences of opinion you can find in the business these days. The traditional industry, of course, represents the historical standard of approach. While pressures to get to market more quickly are having some impact even in some of those houses, the basic concept of an extensive set of procedures in both editorial and physical (and digital) production involves multiple people and departments. Read More
When They Talk About You at #DBW14: You're Branded
This is why Hugh Howey talks of self-publishing authors being “maniacally focused” on their readers. Those writers are doing it without even the apparatus and muscle of publishing houses. They’re conquering that fan-fulfillment challenge one reader at a time—a reader earned must be a reader retained. 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
#DBW14 – The Biz of Books
As Digital Book World has moved to capitalize on its survivor status since O’Reilly Media closed TOC, one of the first headliners announced was Tim O’Reilly, himself, who’ll be onstage on Tuesday morning (10:40 a.m. ET) with a presentation titled “The Real Book Revolution is Just Beginning.” Read More
Men Don't Read Fiction? BULL!
I’d like to try the reverse of a new year resolution: instead of resolving to do something, I’d like to see folks resolve not to do it—or say it—ever again. If I could choose one and only one publishing industry myth to leave behind in 2013, it would be the one that says “men don’t read fiction.” Read More
Where Publishing Surveys Cannot Go
Bomb out as a traditionally aspiring author, and there’s no effect on surveys of author income.
Bomb out as a self-publishing author, and your flat-line is counted against the overall self-publishing earnings track record.
Author Hugh Howey wants us to understand that this is a double standard. He is not wrong. We cannot count the dollars made by traditional authors only if they get published, but count those made by all the self-publishing authors, no matter how they fare in the open market. Read More
#PorterMeets Kobo's Michael Tamblyn for London's The Bookseller
On October 12th, Kobo had a significant catalogue of self-published titles in the UK. Tens of thousands of authors and hundreds of thousands of titles, a thriving part of our UK business. Living the dream, as they say.
On October 14th, we had zero self-published titles available in the UK from zero authors and our 300-year-old retail partner had suspended their web presence. Read More
#PorterMeets Dominique Raccah for London's The Bookseller
The “Porter Anderson Meets” series of weekly interviews starts with a Monday real-time Twitter interview you can follow. Watch our tweets at @Porter_Anderson and #PorterMeets for news of upcoming interviews, then come along — you can join the interview and pop in a question for our guest if you like. Read More