What If Books Just Aren’t It Anymore? Why don’t we start with the assumption that social media and the web are taking over because people actually enjoy them and go from there? Baldur Bjarnason Baldur Bjarnason does seem to actually enjoy getting het up about things. And he’s good at it, too. People generally like… Read More
‘Who Decided Our Worth?’ Do Free Books Give Away Authors’ Value?
‘There’s Something Badly Wrong’ For those following the industry! the industry! in its digital melodrama, tossing books to the crowd free is not new. But the question of whether today’s plethora of free offers may devalue books and/or authors in readers’ minds is not going away as easily as some folks wish it would. Roz Morris… Read More
A New Architecture Of Algorithms: Could Trajectory Make Books ‘Discoverable’ At Last?
‘To Read More Books In A Similar Vein’ As the book publishing industry heads into its first major conference of the year this week — Digital Book World (hash it #DBW15 with us) in New York City — we learn now that we won’t be seeing one late-breaking major development on the program. And that’s not the… Read More
Music For Writers: Martin Bresnick And The Terrible Beauty Of Sorrow
‘We Will Always Sing Such Songs Of Longing’ Each time I visited, my grandmother wept bitterly about the murder of her parents, her brother, her two sisters, and all their children. Can a child comfort a grandmother, a grandfather? I became a witness, a musician, and a composer. Martin Bresnick is a native New Yorker.… Read More
A HarperCollins Holiday Pop-Up Bookstore: ‘Innovation-Driven Environment’
Lean, Light, And Timely On New Year’s Eve, it will be history. The Holiday Pop-Up Store closes at midnight Eastern on December 31. But it will have been another of the tests that HarperCollins (HC) has launched, as it sifts through various avenues of D2C potential — direct to consumer. You still can access the store… Read More
Of Talent And Turkeys
If Anybody Mentions ‘Talent,’ Just Gobble Louder At the heart of mystique is talent. Which is the ultimate mystery. Why do some people have it while others do not? Shelley Souza That’s the writer Shelley Souza in one of several fine, thoughtful comments from Writer Unboxed late last week. In the lead essay there, I… Read More
New And Serious Talk For Authors
Quiet Qualms, Important Inquiries Most major ebook retailers have suffered anemic or declining sales over the last 12-18 months. The gravy train of exponential sales growth is over. Indies have hit a brick wall and are scrambling to make sense of it. Mark Coker In a way, Mark Coker of Smashwords may be saying what we… Read More
Writerly Mystique Vs. Self-Exposure: Mind The Gap
‘About My Generation’ When the teacher comes around asking, “How did you spend your weekend?” my answer will be…responding to comments at Writer Unboxed. As a regular contributor to that large, avidly commented-upon authors’ site, I provide columns under the branding “Provocations in Publishing.” The idea of that phrase is to help the unprepared reader of… Read More
On The Ethical Author Code And Amateurism
The Ethical Author Code The Ethical Author Code is being promoted by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) based in the UK. There’s more about its launch at The FutureBook conference in London here. While no one at ALLi is pointing fingers in this effort, many observers feel that it’s a pivotal one in terms of… Read More
The Marketing Muscle Behind The National Book Award Finalist ‘Station Eleven’
‘Six Weeks And 21 Cities’ I was signing in at a Global Entry / Trusted Travelers kiosk on the passport control floor at JFK the other day, just in from London. I put my passport in, let the machine check my fingerprints, looked at its camera so it could snap its shot. All routine. And then… Read More