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
Fat startup: Eric Ries and his Lean Startup programme go wide
Eric Ries asked for $135,000 on Kickstarter. He got $588,903. That’s not lean. And Ries, a man with a ready sense of humor, cracks up at the suggestion that he’s doing too well to fit into his famous “Lean Startup” gig anymore. “Here’s the thing,” he says. “When you launch a Kickstarter campaign, there’s something great… Read More
The winter of our discontent with the ISBN
ISBN: Not much more traction than the first snowfall on London I’m just glad Amazon & B&N do reveal overall sales ranks so we can measure their mix of sales that way. Other retailers, including Apple, do not, limiting us to only estimating the very top books in a limited number of categories on those… Read More
Subscriptions: What If All The Fitness Club Members Actually Come To The Gym?
If I had a dollar for every time I had seen a pitch for a subscription-based ebook platform, I would by now have launched my own. And right about now, you could be forgiven for feeling that The Bookseller’s Philip Jones is the only guy who hasn’t launched a digital book subscription. In his lead editorial for… Read More
#FutureChat: Authors in the hot zone
Each Friday, join us for a #FutureChat session, live on Twitter, at 4 p.m. London time, 11 a.m. New York time, 8 a.m. Los Angeles, 5 p.m. Berlin, 3 p.m. GMT. Crazy from the heat Disagreements that might cause minor annoyance on a cool day have a way of escalating when the mercury rises. Most riots… Read More
The Bookseller's #PorterMeets: Penguin Random House's Dan Franklin
You could hardly find somebody standing nearer to the center of the intersection of “discoverability” and “know thy consumer” than Dan Franklin. As Digital Publisher to the Penguin Random House empire, he has responsibilities with the Vintage, Penguin General, Cornerstone and Penguin Press divisions. He could be forgiven for needing something of a map to… Read More
FutureBook: Orna Ross, the Pudding Would Like a Word
By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson The FutureBook: Orna Ross, the Pudding Would Like a Word At The FutureBook: What’s important is for all of us to remember that our words, our expressions of opinion, can be hurtful, wrong, unfair, damaging. It’s incumbent upon us to be careful. A tip from the long-lost arts of journalism:… Read More
From Writer Unboxed: Agreeable Disagreement
By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson Writer Unboxed: Agreeable Disagreement We’re flagging these columns “Provocations in Publishing” because the industry! the industry! is one overwrought place these days. Have you noticed how many publishing people stage every disagreement as if it’s life and death? No Writer Unboxed reader would ever do this, of course. It’s the others we’re talking about.… Read More
You Stinking Gatekeeper
Writing on the Ether provides selected news and perspectives on publishing. It is written by journalist and critic Porter Anderson for Jane Friedman and it appears at JaneFriedman.com each Thursday. Sponsorship opportunities are available and offer generous promotion. Join us on Mondays at Ed Nawotka’s and Frankfurt Book Fair’s Publishing Perspectives for the new Ether for Authors column. Read More
Writing on the Ether | JaneFriedman.com
It’s springtime for Amazon, and there’s more than one evolving new slant on the massive retailer in play at the moment. Between the monkey chatter and the growls of slow-moving traditionalists, hear it? A skip in the usual drumbeats. A new syncopation in the publishing jungle. Read More