Writers Welcome Blog!...A John Austin blog

A Reader Feedback Publishing Model is Faster, More Flexible

2012-01-25T00:23:00.001-07:00

Content creation will be developed and pre-tested through cooperation with the author's established community.

Interesting, no? And will result in faster author to reader timelines with consumer desired content (who needs third party editors, publishers, agents).

This new publishing model highlights the importance of writers establishing an online presence.

This from MarketWire:

Sourcebooks Launches Agile Publishing Model

A New Platform for Authors -- Faster, More Flexible, and With Reader Feedback

Sourcebooks launches today an Agile Publishing Model (APM) that will allow for the rapid and interactive development of books, ebooks, videos, and other materials by its authors, where the content evolves through a partnership between the author and their community. This framework allows for a more iterative publishing process -- making content available faster, getting real-time customer feedback, and shaping the final product based on the collaboration between the author and reader.

"The traditional publishing model -- long schedules, creating in a vacuum, lack of involvement with the readers of the end product -- drives some authors crazy," says Dominique Raccah, CEO and publisher of Sourcebooks. "This model is a great fit for experts who are highly immersed in their field and where the field is evolving rapidly."

Entering the Shift Age, by futurist, advisor, and speaker David Houle ( www.davidhoule.com ), will be the first book published under this model in fall 2012. Sourcebooks will release several related ebooks and other materials from Houle as part of the APM over the upcoming months, in which Houle will identify and explain the dynamics and forces that will reshape our world for the next 20 years.

"The model came to our attention from work O'Reilly Media was doing. What was really interesting to me was having a physical book come at the end of a community-building process, and what better way to launch than with a futurist," says Raccah.

The Entering the Shift Age blog will serve not only as the community site for review and discussion of the book, but also as a platform for the development of the Sourcebooks APM. Working together, Houle and the blog community will shape and change the content as the book moves from its initial stages as an interactive, digital platform to a "traditionally published" product.

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SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) Is Shortsighted - Will Hurt More Than Help

2012-01-18T19:43:00.000-07:00

SOPA Will Not Kill Online Piracy

As is often the case, legislators jump into creating new laws (often with the noblest intentions) to correct inequities but write the legislation in such a way that the intended outcome winds up hurting peripheral entities more than the focused inequity correction is worth! And we end up with extremely bad legislation with unintended consequences that far outweigh any perceived benefits.

Could be our elected officials need to hire professional writers to spell out the legislation. You see, good writers are good thinkers/visionaries who can connect the 3-dimensional dots, 100% of the time, much better than the legislative bunch in D.C. today :)

Case in point: Jennifer Grassman, a musician, writer, journalist, and creative person nailed the SOPA weaknesses in an article for the Washington Times:

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA): Will censoring the web stop online piracy?

As a musician, writer, journalist, and creative person, the title of the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) has a distinctly pleasant ring to it. Equally innocuous sounding, PIPA stands for “Protect IP Act.”

But what, may one ask, is in a name? If the spider that lives on the back porch was named Fluffy, would it make her less menacing.
Most people do not have time to read the actual legislation (which, between the two bills, is a scintillating 108-page read), let alone the know-how to decode all the legal jargon. As a result, the dramatic and often contradictory claims of the bill's proponents and opponents become all the more difficult to sort.

Some claim SOPA will protect the rights and property of content creators. Others seem to think it will usher in a 1984-esk dark age of book burnings and fascist government censorship.

With melodramatic flare, on Wednesday, January 18, Wikipedia went black in protest of SOPA and PIPA, stating, “Imagine a world without free knowledge. For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet.”

Will SOPA restrict sites like Wikipedia with its crowd-sourced information gathering dynamism? Is America actually entering 1984 à la George Orwell?

Or will SOPA simply cut the lifeline on pirate websites that are explicitly engaged in criminal activity, i.e. theft or my, and your intellectual property?

CNN Money explains, “SOPA's main targets are 'rogue' overseas sites like torrent hub The Pirate Bay, which are a trove for illegal downloads of movies and other digital content. If you remember Napster you know that content creators have battled against piracy for years, learning that it is nearly impossible to take action against foreign sites. So SOPA's goal is to cut off pirate sites' oxygen by requiring U.S. search engines, advertising networks, and other providers to withhold their services. That means sites like Google would not show flagged sites in their search results, and payment processors like eBay's PayPal could not transmit funds to them.”

In other words, the U.S. Government wants to lay siege to online foreign smuggling enterprises. It's not their intentions many question, but rather their proposed methods.

We all have friends or relatives who illegally download music, movies, video games, and computer programs. Some of them know they are stealing and think it is funny. Others seem to have a romanticized idea of the underdog valiance of piracy, as if they are trotting through Sherwood Forest with Robin Hood and his Merry-file-sharing-Men.

Many seem to think that they are entitled to get everything they want for free, while still others are under the misapprehension that digital products (like MP3s and downloadable software) cost the creator nothing to make, and therefor ought to be free for everyone to enjoy, just like sunshine, sidewalks, and junk mail.

One Facebook user posted the comment, “This is about freedom and knowledge. Ever heard [sic] about how 'Knowledge should be free?' it is because it belongs to the world. SOPA is the typical Republican crap, and I think they are 100% wrong. So only rich people should be allow to watch HBO and get Adobe Acrobat? No way man! That cripples the knowledge. Should I be limited because I do not have money to pay for a class, or software, or books? [Instead], I can 'tweak it' and learn it by myself for free because I skipped their steps, and was smart enough not to get trapped in their BS. I'm the 1% bro, but I'm savvy enough to get the stuff the 99% enjoys because of my knowledge.”

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Just What Is 'Content Licensing' ?

2012-01-14T18:45:00.001-07:00

Guess what? Nobody knows exactly what the hell 'content licensing' is.

Like many things in the new, much uncharted, digital publishing universe ... the general concept is still in flux; but, getting it's focus little by little.

Content licensing implies monetizing written content in some way. And this is important for publishers to get right (after all it is money!). Exactly what is it, what and how to charge for it, how to police the contracted content for abuse, etc., etc., etc.

This insight from Stefanie Botelho in the Login section of FOLIO magazine:

Content Licensing: Making It Work for You

Publishers on creating an additional revenue stream, managing pricing and more

The term “content licensing” is an ambiguous one, especially among publishers. Some consider reprints and e-prints to be a full-fledged content licensing operation; while others leasing out logos and awards for third-party use count it as their content licensing service. Still others have moved custom publishing under the umbrella term of “content licensing”, with syndication often finding itself in this category as well.

Brian Kolb, vice president of Wright’s Media (which works with publishers like Forbes, LAPTOP Magazine and FOLIO: on content licensing deals) says, “We started doing this five years ago, which was the paradigm shift where many of the advertisers were gaining the content they wanted to use for free, like accolades, pull quotes, etc. In order to make up for the lost revenue from e-prints and reprints, we had publishers understand that shift and monetize the access they were giving away for free.”

For publishers who choose to monetize their property beyond advertising and subscriptions, vetting appropriate partners, managing the business and monitoring client contracts can equate to a full-time job. For what can seem like an overwhelming task, deciding which content to barter with may be the first step for companies considering a move into the content licensing business.

Offering the Best, Partnering with the Best

At Northstar Travel Media (NTM), VP of business development and licensing Sheila Rice says the publisher’s wealth of data drives its content licensing business. NTM’s central database includes 70,000 geographic places, 160,000 hotels, 54,000 hotel ratings, 900 convention centers, 30 million news alerts sent annually and a plethora of additional data (including visitor bureaus, cruise lines, ships and more).

“With the raw hotel data, I license it for public view and public use on large travel sites or OTA’s. My partners have the ability to choose the look and feel of how they present their data on their website because they have it in a raw format,” says Rice.

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How They Track Digital Magazines' Audiences

2012-01-11T18:14:00.000-07:00

A little insight tonight into the world of magazine publishing and what a magazine's success is ultimately measured against.

Let's begin with two definitions:

BPA Worldwide (BPA) = Business Publications Audit of Circulation, Inc. BPA Worldwide audits the circulation of business-to-business and consumer magazines. It also provides audit services for newspapers, Web sites, events, email newsletters, digital magazines and other advertiser-supported media produced by its members. Membership comes from the media owners and advertisers.

BPA Worldwide is the largest auditor of media in the world in terms of membership. BPA is similar to Audit Bureau of Circulations, providing independent, third-party verified data that media owners provide to media buyers and advertisers.

BPA Worldwide audited data provides media owners, advertisers and advertising agencies with independent assurance that they are reaching the right audiences.

Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) = is a non-profit circulation-auditing organization. It is one of several organizations, operating in different parts of the world, that audits circulation, readership, and audience information for the magazines, newspapers, and other publications produced by their members.

ABC is a forum of the magazine and newspaper publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies, similar to BPA Worldwide. As a non-profit association, ABC is funded by dues and service fees by advertisers, advertising agencies and publishers. ABC provides credible, verified information critical to the media buying and selling process by conducting independent, third-party audits of print circulation, readership and Web site activity. ABC also maintains an electronic database of audited circulation and readership media.

The measurement of a magazine's performance data is vital to both consumers and advertisers to insure they are buying or investing in the right magazine with the right content and audience.

Makes sense, right? Hell yes ... BUT, the new digital metrics are harder to follow and damn near impossible to measure.

Damn near impossible but not impossible.

Ioanna Opidee teaches us this in an article for FOLIO magazine:

BPA Issues New and Amended Rules for 2012

App reporting continues to present a challenge.

Media auditor BPA Worldwide approved a number of new and amended rules during its December 2011 meeting in New York City, including several that address the increasing difficulty of measuring a magazine’s digital audience.

Reporting app usage, specifically, has been a challenge, increasingly so as the format is moving toward “push,” rather than email, notification of a new issue’s delivery, for which there is no mechanism for tracking successful delivery.

To address this, the BPA board has approved reporting “downloaded apps” by month within a BPA Brand Report, as opposed to a standard BPA report, along with a footnote disclosing the limitations of the figures. Apps related to the brand but not serving editorial content—such as a game—must be reported as their own channel in the Brand Report and cannot be counted as a digital copy. App copies, as opposed to downloaded issues, cannot be reported as qualified circulation.

Subscriber access to digital copies will now be used to substantiate a renewal in the following cases: when a weekly publication has been accessed nine times every six months, when a monthly publication has been accessed twice every six months, when a quarterly publication has been accessed once every six months and when a semiannual publication has been accessed once per audit period.

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Merely Digital Authors May Not Have Clout To Establish Big Name In Writing

2012-01-07T14:14:00.000-07:00

GAME-CHANGING technologies are upon us

We all realize, of course, change is in the air RE publishing. Written content is being delivered by new tech media formats, content itself is morphing into a 3-dimensional entity containing videos, interactivity, real-time updates, graphics dripping with dynamic reality, new biz models are rapidly replacing older ones, etc., etc., etc. ...

But, big house publishers are fighting the tsunami change tooth and nail ... AND they still retain a big bargaining point:

"The technology and the devices are with someone else but the publishers have the content and the authors."

For how long though?

Here is an insightful view by Indian author, Binoo K John, in Tehelka, India's Independent Weekly News Magazine:

A new world of books is upon us

Indications are that the book in printed form is nearing an end. The wonders of a digital world and its commercial lure may be too much to resist

GAME-CHANGING technologies are upon us before we can adjust to their presence. We dread them and often we pretend that the game would not change. Closing our eyes to change is an old human habit. We have no answers so we remain smug. This is happening to the publishing industry worldwide. Technology has changed, the devices have changed, the economics has changed, the rules have changed and so has the scale.

So will the book, the printed and bound book, be a thing of the past?

Can the digital library, the Kindle store, the Apple Store, the many e-readers and tablets finish the book and the wooden bookshelf that decorated our studies and occupied our minds?

It’s possible. The only reason why the printed book might survive for a while is that publishers do not want the traditional model to vanish so fast. The brick and mortar world of publishing is too quaint and too good to be closed so fast and forever. Also, reader habits do not change that quickly. But the change is upon us. How do we cope? When Julian Barnes, while accepting the Booker Prize, sounded a clarion call to keep the bound book alive, he was pointing once again to the imminent danger: the printed book is no longer viable. That is why he wrote a short novel and was duly awarded. This year’s Booker Prize was a business award as well for it wanted to tell publishers the 1,000-page novel is over in printed form.

So, how will it pan out? School texts, either subsidised by the state or privately, would survive for many years. That is a huge number and form the majority of all books printed. The hardcover has almost disappeared. Fiction and nonfiction, including comics and graphic novels, would be printed in small numbers just to give it a physical feel. Actual sales would be in digital bookstores.

The pattern in India would be the same as in the West, because devices used for reading or downloading books are available here though not all books are. So, books would be bought digitally. Libraries in India too would have access to huge digital warehouses. The cost of digitally downloaded books would be lesser than printed books even if the payment is in dollars. Books are bought by the elite or educated classes in every society so they would have easy access to digital sources and have the money to pay as well.

PUBLISHERS WOULD still retain a big bargaining point. The technology and the ...

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How About Some Final Stats for 2011 Publishing

2011-12-31T09:32:00.000-07:00

Print or Digital, books are still books

My last post was on some publishing trends for 2012.

Let's now take a look into some final analytical numbers for 2011 publishing ... What the hell is the state of the union RE publishing, anyway?

The following is a cross post from my Publishing/Writing: Insights, News, Intrigue Blog:

Did the Book Industry Take it on the Chin in 2011? Inside Some Numbers

It’s really hard to tell by the analytical parameters that the old book industry trackers (such as Nielsen BookScan) has set up to take the measurements. BookScan doesn’t even track e-books yet! What the hell are they waiting for? You have to get e-book numbers through other sources such as the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

Let me say now that books are books … regardless of the media they are presented in. And they should be included in any analysis of the overall health of the book publishing industry.

But, this bit of industry analytical dabbling in the following article from Crain’s New York Business by Matthew Flamm does provide an interesting insight:

No happy ending for book industry

Book sales in 2011 dropped 9% overall, with mass market paperbacks seeing the biggest declines. Adult hardcovers—the industry’s biggest moneymaker—saw a 10% drop.

The book industry took it on the chin in 2011, though e-book sales continue to offer the promise of better times to come.

Through Dec. 25, total unit sales of physical books fell 9% to 640.6 million, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks 75% of the market. That compares to a drop of 4% in 2010, and 3% in 2009.

Some categories were hit particularly hard. Sales of mass market paperbacks, a category that has been hurting for years, fell 23% to 82.2 million copies. More troubling, perhaps, was the 10% drop, to 164.1 million units, in the adult hardcover category, which is the industry’s biggest moneymaker. Trade paperbacks proved the most resilient of the major formats, with a 6% sales decline, to 351 million copies.

Among subject groups, adult fiction suffered the most, with an 18% plunge to sales of 160.3 million copies. Commercial fiction tends to sell particularly well as e-books. Adult non-fiction was down 10%, to 263 million copies.

(John’s Note: By the way, how many know the definitions of (or differences between) the following categories: adult fiction, commercial fiction, mass market paperbacks, trade paperbacks, adult hardcover?)

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E-Book Publishing Trends in 2012

2011-12-27T18:12:00.002-07:00

In 2011 digital publishing outgrew its pants almost every week it seemed.

Well, hang on to your asses because 2012 e-book maturation and development will be even more explosive!

And e-book pricing ... which has become the big white elephant in the room ... will focus more on individual true content value and quality and not be subject to a preconceived price for e-books as a whole.

This then is from Laura Hazard Owen on PaidContent.org (The Economics of Digital Content):

What’s Coming In 2012: Book Publishing

This is the second in a series of posts over the next week that will highlight key people, companies and trends to watch in 2012 in the sectors we cover most, from publishing to legal, and from mobile to advertising.

2011 was a busy and eventful year in book publishing—but 2012 promises to be even more so, as various issues that started bubbling up in ‘11 shift and mature. Here are three predictions.

Amazon and Barnes & Noble make a deal, sort of: As Amazon becomes a full-fledged publisher, it has not yet dealt with its bookstore distribution problem. For now, bricks-and-mortar bookstores are still an important place of discovery of new titles. While some have argued that Amazon will simply ignore these bookstores, that the company always takes a long-term strategy and that it won’t care if it misses some physical store sales, I think the company’s recent beefing-up of its force of sales reps suggests it does consider bricks-and-mortar stores at least somewhat significant for now. And with the company publishing books by more high-profile authors like Tim Ferriss and Penny Marshall, readers will be looking for those books in stores.

While a few indies have said they’ll be reluctant to carry Amazon books, Barnes & Noble has said straight out that it won’t carry Amazon titles in print in stores if it can’t also sell them as e-books. I predict that Amazon will offer a select number of new titles, in both print and digital formats, to Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS). The arrangement will probably be less than ideal for Barnes & Noble in some way, because I think Amazon will try to find a way to use Barnes & Noble stores as showrooms while still directing buyers to Amazon.com (NSDQ: AMZN). Maybe Amazon will set high list prices on all of its own new digital titles (it’s already done this with its upcoming Tim Ferriss book), while continuing to sell those books at major discounts in the Kindle store.

E-book pricing will shift to quality-focused debates: The e-book pricing debate up to now has generally focused on the idea that all e-books should cost the same and that all should be priced low. But why should a self-published or mass market thriller necessarily cost the same as a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in e-book form? It doesn’t make sense to me to say that all e-books should cost $9.99 or less.

I am not the only one who thinks this, even though most commenters hated my $9.99 e-books post. Author John Scalzi recently announced that he’ll delete those comments on his blog “in which the focus…is how you don’t like the price of the e-book.” He writes:

"I think it’s important to understand that eBooks are not special snowflakes; they’re just books in electronic form. As someone who prefers to read in eBook form, you are not substantially different from someone who prefers hardcovers, or trade paperbacks, or mass market paperbacks. If someone who preferred paperbacks (or at the very least paperback pricing) showed up on my site on a regular basis to whine and moan about how books should always be priced at that paperback level, on a comment thread that is meant to be on another subject entirely, I would find them tiresome too. Books: They have variable price points! Based on release dates, consumer interest and format, among many other factors!"

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A Very Merry Christmas to All :)))

2011-12-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

From my family to you:

We sincerely wish all a joyous and blessed Christmas.

We pray each and every person on the face of the earth, and in the vast universe beyond, is touched in a special way by their Higher Power during this special time ...

John & YonSuk Austin & Family

Top Left: John R. Austin & wife YonSuk
and Grandson standing 2003
Top Right: YonSuk 1982 Bottom: YonSuk 1983

Top: Daughter & Son-In-Law & Grandaughter
standing on left
Bottom: Granddaughter @ Concert in Taugue, S.Korea

Are App Developers Publishers?

2011-12-21T21:35:00.000-07:00

Skulls: book-app from publisher Touch Press

Many apps have contributed greatly to digital book publishing (introducing multimedia and interactive features for example) and paved the road to modern publishing ... AND have already staked out out future paths for publishing to expand in.

So, are app publishers true publishers or developers?

Now I know many people get hung up on definitions of terms, especially when those same people have been brought up in certain older environments where terms had more singular meanings ... before the advent of newer technologies that have possibly broadened meanings.

Here is an interesting article by Stuart Dredge in the Apps Blog of The Guardian:

Touch Press talks digital publishing, Kindle Fire and inspirational book-apps

'We have broken into the Garden of Eden, and it's upon us to take advantage of that opportunity,' says Max Whitby

2011 has been a fascinating year for book-apps, as publishers and developers experimented with multimedia and interactive features, and wrestled with the challenge of selling enough apps to recoup the investment in those features.

The Elements remains the biggest success story of the book-apps world. Its publisher Touch Press has sold more than 250,000 downloads of its flagship iOS app, bringing in more than $2m of revenues for the company according to chief executive Max Whitby.

It has been followed by a succession of book-apps from the firm, including Solar System and The Waste Land in partnership with book publisher Faber, and recently X is for X-Ray and Skulls by Simon Winchester under its own steam.

Touch Press is a transatlantic collaboration, with an office in the UK headed by Whitby, and two high-profile co-founders – Theodore Gray and Stephen Wolfram – in the US. 2011 has seen the company grow to a staff of 25 people, having raised a second round of funding in the summer.

"Quality is the heart of what we do," says Whitby, explaining why the company has grown relatively slowly. "Our relationship with Apple is only as good as our last title. The day we ship a crap title will be a sad day. That constrains how fast we can go."

Right from the start, Touch Press has presented itself as a publisher rather than an app developer – something that Whitby says meets with mixed reactions from the book publishing industry.

"The world of publishing divides between companies like Faber who understand that the way to work with us is as a partner and jointly make something as a team, and those who just see us as an anoraky developer who can do stuff at a price. We just don't do that: it's not the way you make something interesting and new."

Touch Press' founding team were in the right place with the right backgrounds when Apple launched its iPad in 2010. Wolfram and Gray had worked together on advanced computing system Mathematica, while Whitby was involved in the BBC's Interactive Television Unit in the heyday of CD-ROM, eventually leading a management buyout of the unit to form his own multimedia publishing company.

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The Digital Reader, Digital Book Price Switch Strategy :)

2011-12-16T18:57:00.000-07:00

From left,the Kindle Touch, Kindle Fire tablet and new Kindle displayed…

My theory on the strategy of e-reader and e-book pricing is that it was mapped out prior to public knowledge or acceptance of either.

You know ... sell a new well marketed hardware product (e-readers) at a premium at first (to recover initial research & manufacturing cost) ... but stuff it with a large assortment of low-cost content (cheap e-books consisting of backlists, old titles with expired rights, works by hungry new authors etc.) to sweeten and increase sales ...

THEN, when the consuming public gets hooked on the new reading media device, DROP the e-reader price and UP the e-book price (content price).

I like it because it will give writers more value for their work ... and properly align reward for creativity.

Just thoughts running through my crooked mind. I love being an armchair quarterback :) It's not as if this strategy is a new concept.

This from The Wall Street Journal via Chicago Tribune:

Readers getting cheaper, but rising e-book prices causing sticker shock

Cheap new e-readers are expected to be one of the hottest gifts this holiday season. But new owners of Kindles and Nooks may be in for sticker shock on Christmas morning: The price gap between the print and e-versions of some top sellers has now narrowed to within a few dollars -- and in some cases, e-books are more expensive than their printed equivalents.

When Amazon.com Inc. introduced its first Kindle e-reader back in November 2007, the $9.99 digital best seller was a key selling point. Today, the price of a Kindle has plummeted to under $100 -- from $399 back then. But e-book prices for some popular titles have soared.

Take Ken Follett's massive novel "Fall of Giants," for example, which costs $18.99 as an e-book. On Wednesday it was selling for $16.50 as a paperback on Amazon.

The digital price increases are the result of a decision by the six biggest publishers to set their own consumer e-book prices, a move that effectively bars retailers from discounting their e-books without permission. No such agreement exists for printed books -- where retailers are free to set their own prices. So while a best-selling e-book price is often less than half of the hardcover price, heavy discounting of the print version closes the gap.

Industry executives say this new state of affairs may already be hurting e-book sales, which have skyrocketed over the past three years and are today 15 percent to 20 percent or more of major publishers' revenue.

"Some people who see $12.99 and $14.99 for e-books may find those prices a little expensive," says Scott Waxman, a literary agent and digital-books publisher.

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Inside Higher Ed: The Right of Scholars, Writers and Artists to Freedom of Thought and Expression

2011-12-12T20:41:00.001-07:00

Essays of A.K. Ramanujan

More intrigue involving a scholar's work ... And possible censorship.

A revered scholarly publisher, Oxford Press, who should know better, did finally come to the right decision RE very popular(but lately controversial) works by the late Indian scholar, A.K. Ramanujan.

Details here by Scott Jaschik from INSIDE HIGHER ED:

About-Face by Oxford Press

Just weeks after hundreds of scholars blasted Oxford University Press for ending publication of certain works that have become controversial in India, the press announced that it would republish the works, and distribute them in India and elsewhere.

Oxford made the announcement Friday in an e-mail to the scholars who signed a letter to the press expressing their anger over what was viewed as caving in to right-wing Indian nationalists who were offended by some of the work of the late A.K. Ramanujan. The author, during a career largely spent at the University of Chicago, was considered one of the most influential scholars of Indian cultures and literatures. The scholars charged that the press -- by stopping distribution of Ramanujan's works -- was engaged in scholarly "self-abasement."

Immediately after the scholars sent the letter, Oxford played down the dispute and said that the various works of Ramanujan were out of circulation for economic reasons, withdrawn due to "minimal sales," not due to any pressure in India. While the press offered to meet with the concerned scholars, officials indicated that there was no need to change any publishing decision.

But on Friday, the press reversed course. Its letter to scholars said: "Given the current concern expressed by members of the scholarly community about the availability of The Collected Essays and Many Ramayanas we have taken the decision to reprint both titles immediately and make them available in India and beyond. We are also making Questioning Ramayanas available again. All three titles are available to order from the OUP India website and bookshops across India."

The Ramayana is a Sanskrit epic revered by many Hindus. An essay by Ramanujan -- "Three Hundred Ramayanas" -- has infuriated some in India for references to Rama, a Hindu god, that were not consistent with right-wing Hindu beliefs. That dispute led Delhi University in October to agree to stop teaching the essay -- a move that Salman Rushdie said amounted to "academic censorship." And the controversy then led a group of scholars worldwide to demand that Oxford either start publishing the books again, including in India, or to give up copyright over the books so that others could publish them.

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Just What is an Indie Author and Publisher?

2011-12-09T23:57:00.001-07:00

What is an Indie Author?

More insight from writer-publisher-entrepreneur-businesswoman Joanna Penn (Please visit my post Future Publishing and Book Selling – An Insight RE Joanna on my Publishing/Writing: Insights, News, Intrigue blog) for even more background.

Confusion is evident in the fast changing world of publishing ... especially in understanding just what in the hell is an 'indie' author and an 'indie' publisher ... I know I get mashed potato brains thinking about it at times! :)

Here is a post by Joanna Penn from her Creative Penn blog that brings clarity and is one of the best, all-inclusive explanations I've heard to date:

Self-Publishing And The Definition Of An Indie Author

I’ve been at two publishing conferences in the last week and it’s evident that myths and misconceptions abound when it comes to independent authors and self-publishing.

Book Machine’s Publishing Now even had a debate on the motion “Self-publishing is devaluing publishing.” In a heated discussion afterwards, I could see that the definition of ‘indie’ as it applies to authors is still misunderstood. Of course, when mainstream publishers like Penguin announce their own self-publishing arms, it can be difficult to know what the hell is going on!

This is further demonstrated in the leaked Hachette internal memo on the relevance of publishing companies where they equate self-publishing with just digital distribution, which we (hopefully) all know is only the final step in the process. Joe Konrath & Barry Eisler respond with their comments here which is worth a read.

Eisler defines self-publishing: ‘it means you keep the rights to your book and publish it yourself using distributor/retailers like Amazon, Apple, B&N, Kobo, Smashwords, and Sony, typically retaining 70% of the cover price instead of the 17.5% offered by legacy publishers (for digital editions). This isn’t what “most people” mean when they say self-publishing; it’s what everybody means when they say self-publishing.

But it’s true that to many people self-publishing means bad quality books with no editing published by one of the vanity presses and the main concern is that this crap is flooding the world and readers can’t find quality in the mass of rubbish. I know these books do exist but I hope you agree that we can do a lot better than that these days. I also believe that readers are the new gatekeepers so sales online, reviews and rankings will ensure that the cream rises and bad stuff drops out of the picture.

The term ‘indie author’ has been increasingly claimed by authors who want a new label, one that does justice to the work involved.

This is my take on the subject but please add your comments and thoughts as it is definitely a moving target and no doubt there will be continued debate on it. I do mean for this to be an inclusive definition and you may sit somewhere on the spectrum of indie or you may be traditionally published. People have different aims for their books and their writing careers and I respect your choices, I just wanted to add to the debate!

Indie author means truly independent

At its most basic, indie means there is no separate publisher involved. Many indies may have setup their own micro-press, so their books still have a publisher name that is not the author’s name but the publisher is not one of the author services companies. The indie author most likely owns their own ISBNs. The indie pays the bills and is paid by the distributors e.g. Amazon/Smashwords directly. The only middleman is the distributor.

There has been a blurring of the line between indie author and indie publisher that seems to be mostly related to size and scope of the business. I am an indie publisher of my own books so it’s basically the same thing as being an indie author, but there are small & midsize independent publishing houses who don’t like the term indie being used for people like me. However, there are increasing numbers of micro-businesses being set up by authors who also publish other author’s books so these perhaps count as indie publishers.

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Independent Booksellers Reluctant to Carry Amazon Titles in Stores

2011-12-05T19:15:00.000-07:00

More intrigue (and actual gossip) RE Amazon's publishing imprints :)

Seems the bricks-and-mortar indy bookstores are bucking selling the Amazon publishing printed versions.

Publishers Weekly says Amazon’s “fast-growing [publishing] group had an outsized impact on the industry.”

But, research seems to indicate that Amazon Publishing has not had an outsized impact on the industry ... in fact their numbers as reported by Nielsen BookScan are quite lackluster.

These details by Laura Hazard Owen in mocoNews.net:

The Truth About Amazon Publishing, Part II

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) says it will double the number of original titles it publishes next year, to 400, and add more imprints, including a couple in New York. Much more interesting is what the company doesn’t say in that interview—and those omissions reflect the difficulties I explored in “The Truth About Amazon Publishing” last month.

Seth Godin Is Forgotten; Print Sales Are Poor: Publishers Weekly lists Amazon Publishing’s five top sellers in 2011, “in both e-book and print” (i.e., I think, in those formats combined): The Hangman’s Daughter; A Scattered Life; Elizabeth Street; Easily Amused; and Alison Wonderland.

SEE ALSO: The Truth About Amazon Publishing

Now, wait a sec. I checked the print sales numbers for each Amazon Publishing title last month, using Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 75 percent of hardcover and paperback sales (including print sales on Amazon). Here, according to BookScan, are Amazon’s top 5 print bestsellers in 2011 (I verified these titles’ BookScan numbers this morning):

1. The Hangman’s Daughter (imprint: AmazonEncore): 28,467 copies sold in print

2. Poke the Box (imprint: Seth Godin’s The Domino Project): 24,883 copies

3. Do the Work (imprint: The Domino Project): 8,933 copies

4. AWOL on the Appalachian Trail (Imprint: Amazon Encore): 6,000 copies

5. Anything You Want (imprint: The Domino Project): 5,920 copies

Three of these are Domino Project titles and that only The Hangman’s Daughter is listed as a top seller in the PW article. Here are the print sales for the titles PW lists as Amazon Publishing’s bestsellers:

1. The Hangman’s Daughter: 28,467 copies sold in print

2. Elizabeth Street: 1,073 copies

3. Easily Amused: 681 copies*

4. A Scattered Life: 629 copies*

5. Alison Wonderland: 205 copies

*These books are sold in Sam’s Club, which does not report sales to BookScan; their sales are likely higher than the BookScan numbers.

Some thoughts here:

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Good Reasons To Self-Publish AND Good Reasons To Traditional Publish

2011-12-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

The much advertised reasons to self-publish have become well known to interested students of the art of late ... But, there are equally good reasons to traditional publish as well :)

Journalist and author, Edan Lepucki, mentions her reluctance to become “Amazon’s bitch” ... I just love that expression!

Mathew Ingram, a senior writer with GigaOM, writes a cool article with many informative links (including Edan Lepucki with a nice list of reasons why a writer might decide NOT to self-publish):

What purpose do book publishers serve?

We’ve written a lot about the disruption in the book-publishing industry over the past year or so, with Amazon not only creating a huge market for authors to self-publish on the Kindle — thereby avoiding traditional publishers altogether — but also signing writers to its own imprint, and cutting the Big Six publishing houses out of the picture. But it should be noted that working with a publisher can have its benefits as well as its disadvantages, and writer Edan Lepucki has put together a nice list of reasons why someone (including her) might decide not to self-publish. If publishers have any weapons against Amazon, they are on this list.

Lepucki, who writes for a magazine called The Millions and is also an author, says while she sees the benefits of self-publishing — the freedom from a traditional book contract, the ability to control the way the book is marketed, that self-publishers typically keep a larger share of the proceeds, and so on — she has decided not to self-publish her first book. In an earlier essay, Lepucki wrote about how she had given up trying to market her work to publishers, but despite a number of authors describing how easy self-publishing is, she says she has decided to pursue a traditional book deal (others have come to different conclusions: despite some misgivings, Marc Herman says he decided to publish his journalism about the Middle East as a Kindle Single instead of as a traditional book).

Publishers can help a book rise above the noise

One of the reasons the author says she has come to this conclusion is that, while many people seem to see the publishing industry as dead in the water, she still believes there are good publishers out there, that they serve a purpose and that their recommendation of a book has value. As she puts it:

I trust publishers. They don’t always get it right, but more often than not, they do. As I said in the piece that started me off on this whole investigation: “I want a reputable publishing house standing behind my book; I want them to tell you it’s good so that I don’t have to.”

This gets at one of the issues that keeps coming up every time I write about self-publishing, and how Amazon’s Kindle and other tools allow a writer to reach readers without having to go through a publisher. These posts often get comments that could be paraphrased as: “But then the world will be full of terrible writing, and how will we find the good stuff?” And certainly one of the primary functions a good editor or publisher can provide is to filter through content and select the best (of course, that also means that much potentially valuable writing is not chosen).

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Libraries Help Grow the Publishing Industry

2011-11-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

My recent posts RE e-lending libraries and some of the intrigue generated due to the still-developing posturing of the peripherals of this new media business ... has brought to life the role that libraries have always played in the publishing industry and will continue to play in the digital lending era.

Here is a librarian's point of view (and a good one it is :)) written by Greg Hill, director of Fairbanks North Star Borough libraries, in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner:

Libraries are active partners with the publishing industry

Read more: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner - Libraries are active partners with the publishing industry
FAIRBANKS — Samuel Pepys, the great English diarist who chronicled London life in the 1660s, was a sucker for an interesting book. In Pepys’ day, book buyers purchased the loose pages of manuscripts and had them bound themselves. For example, on July 8, 1664, Pepys wrote that he’d gone “to the binder’s and directed the doing of my Chaucer … and thence to the clasp-maker’s to have it clasped and bossed.”

Librarians love bookstores, of course, and that affection’s largely returned by booksellers, who’ve long known that thriving libraries inspire readers to buy books.

Last month Publisher’s Weekly had an article about a Library Journal survey showing more than “50 percent of all library users report purchasing books by an author they were introduced to in the library. This debunks the myth that when a library buys a book the publisher loses future sales. Instead, it confirms the public library not only incubates and supports literacy, as is well understood in our culture, but it is an active partner with the publishing industry in building the book market, not to mention the burgeoning e-book market.”

Librarians certainly buy a lot of books for themselves. I spend a little extra to buy new books locally and support our local booksellers. When used books are hard to locate, I turn to BookFinder.com. For example, my friend Leon showed me how engaging his 1938 copy of Judge James Wickersham’s “Old Yukon: Tales, Trails, and Trials” was recently, and I craved my own copy. BookFinder.com revealed a bookstore in Massachusetts would part with theirs for $6.99, after I threw in another $3.99 for shipping. Now, it’s mine.

The Judge’s book has the entire May 1903 issue of the Fairbanks Miner, with an exclusive with Felix Pedro and a tall “Tanana Tale,” about a miner who claims to survive falling in the Tanana River at 70 below, getting lost, and staving off starvation by eating the tail of his lead dog.

“I gave Doughnuts the bone out of his tail,” he explained, “and after gnawing it a while he came on into the Fortymile with me.”

Few events are so pleasing as books in the mail. The pleasure’s heightened when they arrive wrapped in tissue paper. My new “Old Yukon” measured up, and was further wrapped in pages from a New York Times several weeks old. Several eye-catching articles popped out, including one by Jess Bidgood about the Occupy Wall Street Library, also known as the “People’s Library.”

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Penguin - And More E-Lending Library Intrigue

2011-11-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

I have been posting lately on the intrigue developing among some major players in the digital book selling and publishing industry since libraries have begun lending digital books (e-books).

And there have been varying and interesting points of view RE rather digital book retailers such as Apple and Amazon (now also a digital publisher with it's Kindle Fire) are positioning themselves in the best interests of the consumers, writers, publishers or gadget sellers :))) ... And at whose expense.

Here is a reaction by one major publishing house detailed in this article by Laura Hazard Owen for mocoNews.net (Mobile News):

Why Might A Publisher Pull Its E-Books From Libraries?

Following yesterday’s news that Penguin, citing security concerns, is pulling its new e-books from libraries—and making none of them available for library lending through Kindle—many are wondering why the publisher would do such a thing. (Penguin and Random House had been the only two “big six” publishers to offer unfettered access to e-books through libraries; now Random House is alone in doing so.)

Here are some possible reasons, none of which are “Penguin is stupid and is trying to make itself obsolete”—but all of which are a response to high demand for e-books in libraries, and I might argue that attempts to curtail or impede that demand are, at a minimum, counterproductive.
» Penguin is mad about Amazon’s deal with OverDrive and is retaliating. If you have a Kindle and have checked out a library book on it, you will notice that clicking “Get for Kindle” sends you to straight to Amazon’s website instead of having you check out the book from within the library’s site. Here’s how it looks:

When I click “Get for Kindle,” I’m directed to this page on Amazon’s site (click to enlarge):

Notice anything? Yeah, it looks an awful lot like an Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) shopping page and I have to be logged into my Amazon account to get the book. Publishers Lunch notes, “Though OverDrive had promised in April that patrons’ ‘confidential information will be protected,’ in implementation their program is an engine for turning library users into Amazon customers.” (Publishers Lunch also notes that, since libraries had already bought the e-books from Penguin, it’s surprising that Penguin is simply allowed to withdraw access to them.)

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Amazon's Kindle Library Creates Anger and Intrigue in the Publishing Industry

2011-11-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

Through it's Kindle library, Amazon has essentially stolen the rights of writers and publishers to determine usage, pricing and destiny of their creative products.

Please refer to my post on the Publishing/Writing: Insights, News, Intrigue Blog Publishers Are Going To Loose Not Only Their Retailers But Their Authors In The Future for more background on this Writers Welcome Blog post.

By lending new books for free (one per month for Kindle Prime Service) Amazon is undercutting free and full determination of author's creative capital ... and, I believe, violating copyright intent.

Matt Brownell gives great insight on this issue with this article in MainStreet.com :

Publishers Are Seeing Red Over Amazon’s Kindle Library

NEW YORK (MainStreet) – Earlier this month, Amazon introduced the latest perk for members of its $79-a-year Amazon Prime Service: The Kindle Lending Library, which allows Kindle-owning Prime subscribers to “borrow” one book a month, free of charge. It was a boon to Prime subscribers, and in advance of the launch of the Kindle Fire, another argument for joining the retailer’s rapidly growing content ecosystem.

For some publishers and authors, though, the new service looks like a harbinger of doom.

On Monday the Authors Guild, a writers’ advocacy group, became one the first elements of the publishing industry to officially register its objections to the service, blasting it with an extensive blog post that accuses the retail giant of running roughshod over its contractual agreements with publishers.

According to the post, Amazon approached the six major publishers asking them to include their books in the list of available titles, but all six refused. Amazon then went to the next smallest tier of publishers, but when they likewise refused, Amazon went ahead and included their titles in the library anyway.

Paul Aiken, the Authors Guild’s executive director, explains that the major six publishers have “agency model” contracts with Amazon, allowing them to set the retail prices of books sold on Amazon. By contrast, all smaller publishers have “wholesale” contracts, which allows Amazon to sell the books at any price it chooses so long as it pays the wholesale price to the publisher. According to the Guild, though, such contracts don’t extend to actually giving away the books for free.

Still, Amazon will still be paying the wholesale price on each book that’s borrowed through the library, clearly on each individual transaction will be compensated by Prime memberships.

So if publishers are still getting paid, why are they so upset?

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'Library Journal' Says E-Book Lending is Exploding

2011-11-16T21:49:00.000-07:00

Public libraries initially dipped their toes into digital lending several years ago on PC's and e-readers ... Now they are upping their game and getting into the mobiles: smartphones and tablet computers. Apps are beginning to flow!

The popularity of these devices has created a downpour of new demand for digital lending.

Reporter Roger Yu gets into some interesting growth statistics and projections in this insightful article for USA Today:

Libraries ramp up e-book lending

Libraries nationwide are finding more ways to go mobile.

After a tentative foray into digital lending on PCs and e-readers several years ago, public libraries are opening the next chapter for smartphones and tablet computers.

The movement kicked into high gear in September when Amazon finally turned on its Kindle for 11,000 local libraries, triggering a flood of new users. App developers are also working with libraries to enable book lovers to borrow on their smartphones.

"With more devices for consumers to try, they're going to get better," says Christopher Platt of the New York Public Library. "And the e-reading experience will get better."

The evolution is playing out amid some challenges, including an ongoing squabble between eager-to-grow libraries and publishers that fear copyright infringement and losing money on digital distribution, their fastest-growing segment of business.

Some large publishers — such as Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Hatchette — refuse to sell to libraries, thus limiting the availability of popular titles.

Still, customers' appetite for e-book lending is growing unabated. According to Library Journal, public libraries increased their offerings by 185% this year. E-books will account for 8% of their materials budget in five years, it says.

The New York Public Library has quadrupled its e-book budget since 2009 and plans to spend $1 million this year, Platt says. The Seattle Public Library's e-book circulation grew by 92% in 2010, says Kirk Blankenship, its electronic resources librarian.

Some new developments will accelerate the growth pace. Among them:

•Kindle agreement. Unlike the rival Barnes & Noble Nook or Sony Reader, Amazon has refused to play ball with libraries on its Kindle until a few weeks ago.

When Amazon finally did e-book lending on the Kindle and app, the rocket in circulation was quick, says Mary Dempsey of the Chicago Public Library. The New York and Seattle library systems say their e-book lending has risen by more than 30% since Kindle's agreement.

•Smartphone options. Reading options for smartphones and tablet computers are emerging quickly. Kindle's app works on both Apple's devices and the Android operating system.

Overdrive, a large e-book distributor for libraries, released its app for e-books. It has seen over 2 million downloads since its release late last year. In a trial, 3M, another e-book distributor, will install a kiosk next month at several libraries for browsing e-books. Customers read using 3M's library app.

•Library apps. Some libraries are considering their own apps. Douglas County Libraries in Colorado is on tap to be the first in the country with its own app.

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Hooray for HarperCollins' Employees ... Intro to 'Occupy Lit'

2011-11-12T17:52:00.000-07:00

All our country's current unrest and angst RE Wall Street's hypocritical machinations, lying and downright greed has not gone unnoticed by the publishing world ... Especially since the publishing world (at least in part) is knee-deep in that very same greed!

But, here comes the righteous to smite the bad, greedy bastards and put them in their place (actually their place is so very far below this earth they can't be hit hard enough to go there; but, they WILL find their way there eventually).

The gallant, righteous heroes in this case are the employees of News Corp-owned book publishing company HarperCollins ... And you know who owns HarperCollins today: Rupert Murdoch, the poster child for the 1%'s greed.

This by Rosie Gray of 'The Runnin Scared Blog' in The Village Voice:

Occupy Lit: Publishing Employees to Rally Against HarperCollins

Spotted at Occupy Wall Street by the Observer: employees of News Corp-owned book publishing company HarperCollins are staging a rally next Wednesday, making this the latest union action to throw its lot in with OWS.

"Employees of HarperCollins have been working without a contract for almost a year," the flier reads. "Management wants to eliminate guaranteed wage increases, double the cost of health benefits and eviscerate layoff and seniority protection."

It continues, "HarperCollins is a highly profitable commercial publisher and is owned by RUPERT MURDOCH, poster child for the 1%'s greed. Please join us for a lunch hour rally in support of the dedicated HarperCollins staff."

Unionized HarperCollins employees are members of UAW Local 2110 [disclosure: Village Voice union members are also represented by that union but have nothing to do with the HarperCollins rally]. According to UAW Local 2110 recording secretary Eden Schulz, the HarperCollins bargaining unit is about 200 people. "I wouldn't say most of the positions are in the bargaining unit, but we represent a huge chunk," she said. She noted that starting salaries at HarperCollins are about $30,000.

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Backlit, E-Book Publisher, Creates Shortest Path from Writer to Reader

2011-11-09T20:17:00.000-07:00

The absolute warp speed of e-book production has made possible the impossible dream ... Mainly, being able to rapidly test new story ideas (before actually writing the entire story) with digitally-addicted audiences through online trailers or "e-snippits" on social media sites.

Backlit publishing presents the new publishing model that accomplishes this feat starting with incubating teen serials as episodic apps and film/TV properties.

From MarketWatch.com:

Backlit Launches New Publishing Model for Teen Franchises

Backlit ( www.backlitfiction.com ) launched its first series of teen franchise ebooks via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple: Borrowing Abby Grace, The Start-Up and The Dig, followed by Young Americans, Future Perfect and The Defiants early next year. Similar to Young Adult (YA) successes like Gossip Girl and The Hunger Games, Backlit ebooks will create new franchises tailored to and tested with teen audiences.

Backlit has a first look film and television deal with Jack Giarraputo of Happy Madison. Jack is one of Hollywood's most successful producers with films grossing over $2 billion domestically. He is Backlit's strategic partner, creative advisor and lead investor. "Backlit is reinventing publishing by shortening the path from writer to reader," said Giarraputo.

The Backlit model quickly determines audience and franchise value. "The speed of ebook production allows Backlit to test fresh commercial ideas with core audiences," said Backlit Publisher, Panio Gianopoulos. "Working closely with some of Hollywood's best creative minds, Backlit is committed to telling stories that will be loved as books, television and movies."

Episodic content is previewed via Facebook and Twitter, allowing Backlit to engage teens who routinely find their entertainment online. Immediate audience feedback, interactivity and spin-offs take on a whole new value when stories are created and released quickly. Focused on Millennial readers with episodic attention spans, Backlit ebook downloads will be released exclusively digitally every few weeks, yet offer significant narrative depth.

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More on Amazon Publishing - The Devil is in the Still Morphing Details

2011-11-05T18:59:00.002-06:00

Everything experiences growing pains. Amazon's foray into the publishing world is no exception.

No denying Amazon, coupled with the fast-evolving digital tech, is and will be a real game changer ... But, the pros and cons details are still shaking out.

For more background on Amazon Publishing please refer to these three previous posts.

This from David Streitfeld in the New York Times:

Uncovering Amazon Publishing

The legacy book publishers are pretty much open shops. If you want to know how many titles they are publishing this fall, just get a catalog and add them up. Amazon is taking a different tack, shrouding much of the plans for its publishing venture in the secrecy it extends to most of its business dealings. (Apple, no slouch at being close-mouthed, at least reveals how many iPads it sells. Amazon does not do the same with Kindles.)

Amazon issues a press release when announcing a new imprint — a half-dozen so far, plus a somewhat anomalous operation run by the entrepreneurial thinker Seth Godin — but little more. Since the books are sold almost exclusively on the Amazon site and are usually digital, they do not appear on any of the traditional best-seller lists. What is selling is unclear; how and why is even murkier.

Laura Hazard Owen at Paidcontent.org took a dive this week into the subject with her article “The Truth About Amazon Publishing.” After counting the books one by one, she found 263 current and forthcoming Amazon titles. Just about all are also published in physical form. Readers are enthusiastic about reviewing these efforts and tend to give them high grades (average: 4.09 out of 5).

About a fifth of the titles become digital best sellers, too. But this tended to happen when the titles were sold at promotional prices, which illustrates the power of becoming the Kindle Daily Deal but little else. “Elizabeth Street” by Laurie Fabiano, described as “a novel based on true events” of the Italian immigrant experience, was featured in a late August deal, after which it hit No. 1. It is now 1,542.

Ms. Owen concludes that “Amazon Publishing hasn’t killed print yet.” But is anyone saying it has? The real question is whether it will reshape publishing by dissolving old rules and creating new expectations, the way it has reconfigured bookselling. Will a physical edition become the reward for a successful electronic publication? Will authors enlarge their share of e-book revenues at the expense of traditional publishers? Will independent bookstores carry Amazon books? How will readers on Amazon itself discover these new titles? What sort of cottage industries will grow up to help writers promote their books online?

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Related article on Amazon Publishing Imprints

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A Marketplace for Writers and Publishers to Connect

2011-11-01T08:43:00.000-06:00

Contently, a new startup company, is a site that allows writers to upload their profile(s) of work or other accomplishments that reflect their brand; AND also allows publishers to join (after vetting) ... in essence establishing an open marketplace that is a great place to manage writing careers and publishing operations (resources and content management).

These details are provided by Veena Bissram on Mashable.com:

Contently Provides An Open Marketplace for Writers and Publishers To Connect

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here

Name: Contently

Quick Pitch: Contently is an open marketplace for writers and publishers.

Genius Idea: Empowering and connecting quality writers and brands.

It’s not uncommon to hear of writers, journalists and publishers hitting roadblocks in their careers.

There are the writers and journalists who find it nearly impossible to search for, yet alone land exceptional freelance opportunities. Then there are the publishers who are faced with countless requests from writers, making it difficult to select the most experienced or distinguished journalists in the bunch.

That’s why three startup entrepreneurs founded Contently, a website geared toward empowering and connecting quality writers and brands.

“We realized that there is an inefficiency in freelance writing because writers have to spend a lot of time hassling after editors and work,” said Shane Snow, one of the three co-founders of Contently. “As the world moves increasingly towards freelance, we wanted to build a marketplace for freelancers and to allow publishers to become more efficient.”

After starting off as an open marketplace for writers and publishers in 2010, Contently gradually evolved into a platform for journalists to manage their freelance careers and for publishers to obtain access to millions of the world’s top writers in their industry.

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E-Books Bestseller Lists

2011-10-29T19:01:00.000-06:00

The New York Times and USA Today saw the handwriting on the wall and recently initiated publishing e-book sales figures and e-books bestseller lists ... Now The Wall StreetJournal (bringing up the rear) announced they will also publish an e-books bestseller list.

Lauren Indvik has this to say in Mashable Business:

Wall Street Journal to Launch Bestseller Lists for Ebooks

The Wall Street Journal‘s bestseller rankings will now include ebook sales, the publisher announced Friday.

Beginning this weekend, the Journal will display four lists charting book sales: combined ebook and hard copy sales of fiction, combined ebook and hard copy sales of non-fiction, ebook-only sales of fiction, and ebook-only sales of non-fiction.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple and Google are among the retailers that have agreed to release ebook sales numbers to Nielsen, which powers the Journal‘s rankings.

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Amazon and the Underbelly of the Internet Economy

2011-10-26T21:30:00.000-06:00

Amazon had a BIG drop in third quarter operating income ... To be exact, a whopping 71% drop over the same time last year!

The drop is mainly due to such business practices as expansion and new products (Kindle Fire) designed to sell for a loss in order to boost sales of other tangental Amazon products such as e-books, videos and music.

When all the economists and business analysts delved into the reasoning for the Amazon third quarter decline they also found that the Amazon Behemoth had a dark side ... or underbelly if you will.

Ahhh yes, when sales are high the Greed Monster takes over and it pushes and pushes workers and equipment harder and harder until something, or someone, breaks!

What a horrible, stifling, stressful merry-go-round to be caught up in.

Here's more by David Streitfeld in the New York Times:

Amazon Suffers Big Drop in Income

Investors shrugged off Amazon’s warnings this summer that its third quarter would be weak.

Whoops.

Moments after the retailer reported Tuesday that operating income for the quarter had fallen 71 percent from 2010, the high-flying stock sank $25 in after-hours trading. Add the $10 that Amazon had lost before the earnings report, and its market cap shriveled in one day by about $16 billion.

If the past was weak, Amazon was cautious about the future, too. Despite the new Kindle Fire tablet’s selling so well that it was already increasing production, Amazon said it might lose as much as $200 million in the fourth quarter.

“There are times when investors shoot first and ask questions later,” said Scott Devitt, an analyst with Morgan Stanley. He remains a believer. “Does the company still have a strong ability to grow? I think the answer is yes.”

Revenue for the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, came in largely on target. As customers swarmed to boxes of dried cherries, “Pirates of the Caribbean,” downloads of the Sims video games, diagnostic code readers for cars and the latest “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” — all Amazon best sellers in their categories — sales rose 44 percent to $10.88 billion.

Amazon has been stressing recently, as it has so often over its 16-year history, that it is investing for the future, not seeking immediate profit. With revenue rising about 40 percent each quarter, it simply needs more capacity. In a highly competitive and fragile retailing environment, that is an enviable problem to have.

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The Publishing Genie Is Out Of The Bottle ...

2011-10-22T20:09:00.000-06:00

... And it appears that even established authors are having trouble thinking outside the box. Some renowned authors are so used to a certain structure (a rather restricted and stingy one at that) they can think only in terms of the old publishing model and can't visualize the possibilities in modern publishing. Can't handle the new freedom in the publishing landscape.

It's sort of like when a dictator-driven country is suddenly liberated and the citizens just don't know what to do or where to turn ... at least at first.

Warren Adler, author of The War of the Roses, Random Hearts and the PBS trilogy The Sunset Gang, is also a pioneer in digital publishing. But, even with his digital experience, his musings in the following article show his latent bewilderment and uneasiness with the current publishing landscape ... and just how new authors will be discovered.

At least that's my take on it.

Simply, authors today will have to do the exact same thing they did under the traditional publishing model, except they will have to do it more vertically ... Put another way, they are now empowered to do many of the tasks that had to be done for them before ... at great monetary and time expense.

Here then is the renowned Warren Adler with some great insight on the new Amazon publishing imprint and other musings:

The Publishing Civil War

So, Amazon is to become the official publisher of its own books. It was, of course, bound to happen, too tempting to resist. After all, it does represent a large chunk of the retail book business and does operate its own production and distribution facilities both through its Kindle and print sites.

In effect, it now competes not only with its suppliers (meaning other publishers) large and small, but also with other authors, both traditionally published and a giant wave of self-published authors.

As a pioneer in the eBook juggernaut when it was a pipsqueak possible spinoff of publishing in the early days of Internet sales, I viewed this development as an inevitability. It is by no means a surprise.

The upcoming phase in what is clearly a civil war between the traditional publishers and a powerful arm of its distribution system is what will happen next. The fact is that Amazon has been skirting around the edges for years, and in some ways has been its own publisher, offering titles exclusive to its sites.

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Writing 'Big House' Publishers Out of the Loop

2011-10-17T20:17:00.000-06:00

“Publishers are terrified and don’t know what to do”

Amazon is on the move again! Agressively signing up authors in direct contracts that cut out the traditional publishers, agents and critics.

This from The New York Times by DAVID STREITFELD :

Amazon.com has taught readers that they do not need bookstores. Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their publishers.

Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form. It is a striking acceleration of the retailer’s fledging publishing program that will place Amazon squarely in competition with the New York houses that are also its most prominent suppliers.

It has set up a flagship line run by a publishing veteran, Laurence Kirshbaum, to bring out brand-name fiction and nonfiction. It signed its first deal with the self-help author Tim Ferriss. Last week it announced a memoir by the actress and director Penny Marshall, for which it paid $800,000, a person with direct knowledge of the deal said.

Publishers say Amazon is aggressively wooing some of their top authors. And the company is gnawing away at the services that publishers, critics and agents used to provide.

Several large publishers declined to speak on the record about Amazon’s efforts. “Publishers are terrified and don’t know what to do,” said Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House, who is known for speaking his mind.

“Everyone’s afraid of Amazon,” said Richard Curtis, a longtime agent who is also an e-book publisher. “If you’re a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you’re a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you too. And if you’re an agent, Amazon may be stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out.

“It’s an old strategy: divide and conquer,” Mr. Curtis said.

Amazon executives, interviewed at the company’s headquarters here, declined to say how many editors the company employed, or how many books it had under contract. But they played down Amazon’s power and said publishers were in love with their own demise.

“It’s always the end of the world,” said Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon’s top executives. “You could set your watch on it arriving.”

Read and learn more

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Pre-Funding E-Books! An 8 1/2 Minute Revelation on Self-Publishing Book Marketing

2011-10-15T09:57:00.001-06:00

Jim Kukral, an internet marketer of sorts, became a writer to enhance his sales ... and has met with good success with marketing his e-books.

Today, in the digital self-publishing era, writers must become marketers (and really a jack-of-all-trades in all book logistics) to grab success in bookselling in the digital clouds of the internet.

What struck me about Jim Kukral is that he came up with an idea that uses crowdsourcing to pre-fund publication of e-books (getting paid before you write the book). He is currently working on a series of books where he has raised over $20,000 so far through 'crowdsourcing'...

Neat concept, but I need more info on how to gather the crowd to source from!

Anyway, here is a video interview with Jim:

Monitoring E-Book Trends Internationally

2011-10-12T21:41:00.000-06:00

If publishers could quickly research e-book growth in other countries ... such as Europe, Asia, Australia, North and South America ... based on digital device adoption, attitudes, and purchasing habits of e-book consumers, they would have a gold- mine of a service. A real mother load to help them make timely business decisions and maximize market share in developing countries.

The Bowker Company, you know - the one who assigns the ISBN's, but which is also one of the book industries leading business intelligence researchers, is about to instigate an annual report that monitors e-book trends internationally ... thereby providing that subject book intelligence goldmine :)

From PRWEb.com:

Bowker Launches International e-Book Monitor

Comprehensive survey on four continents will track e-book growth and consumer attitudes giving publishing industry hard data on a dynamic new format

Bowker, the leading provider of market research information and business intelligence on book markets in the U.S., through BML Bowker, in the U.K., will launch a major study that will assess and track device adoption, attitudes, and purchasing habits of e-book consumers in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. The study, commencing in January 2012 and repeating annually, will enable comparisons between e-book markets in countries experiencing different growth patterns and arm the publishing industry with a comprehensive range of qualitative and quantitative data.

“Being able to track the growth rates of e-books on a global level as countries make the shift to digital books is significant,” said Kelly Gallagher, vice-president of publishing services for Bowker. “This landmark effort will provide the international publishing industry with key metrics in understanding digital opportunities as they emerge.”

The project will map the current state of e-book use and acceptance around the world, creating a benchmark from which to track trends during subsequent studies. The research will target representative samples from the U.K., U.S., Germany, France, Spain, India, Australia, Brazil, South Korea and Japan. Consumers from these countries will be surveyed on their purchases of digital content versus traditional formats in multiple settings and contexts. The study will also explore the use and ownership of devices, from dedicated e-book readers to tablets.

The e-book monitor will be supported by key international publishing industry participants, who will have a unique opportunity to collaborate on the creation of the survey instrument and provide expertise in the interpretation of the results.

“We are delighted that the key organizations we identified to work with us on this project are on board, representing as they do different perspectives on the industry and offering a wealth of experience that will help provide valuable context for this study,” said Jo Henry, Managing Director of BML Bowker.

The list includes A.T. Kearney, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), Pearson and Tata Consultancy Services.

Read and learn more

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Digital Era = Third Age of Publishing.

2011-10-08T19:45:00.000-06:00

As most realize by now, digital will be chomping off the major share of the publishing market in the future ... But, there still remains a very healthy demand for the printed word at present ... and a somewhat lesser degree of demand will always exist.

Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press (CUP), Stephen Bourne, has this insight on the digitalization of the publishing industry, especially textbooks becoming digital in the near future with pictures, music and videos of learning material:

'Publishing industry moving towards digitalization'

Thiruvananthapuram: The publishing industry worldwide is fast moving towards digitalization and there is a strong future for publishers in the digital medium, Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press (CUP) Stephen Bourne said here on Saturday.

"The digital era is actually the second industrial revolution and third age of publishing. However, print publishing will continue for many years as there is good demand for it also," he told a meet-the press programme organised by the Press Club here.

John's Note: If the digital era is the third age of publishing, does anybody know what the first two ages of publishing might be? A good homework assignment for those interested :)

CUP's revenue from digital medium was two percent a decade ago, but has touched 20 percent now and is expected to go up to 40 percent by 2020, said Bourne, who took charge as CEO of CUP in 2002.

On digital medium in education, he said textbooks would become digital in the near future with pictures, music and videos of learning material, he said.

CUP was also committed to support innovation in learning and teaching, he said, adding that CUP publishes without boundaries, ensuring its resources are accessible across the globe, in print, digital and online formats'.

Read and learn more

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E-Books Published With Wide Distribution

2011-10-03T20:24:00.000-06:00

Perseus Books Group says they will offer marketing and distribution services for self-published e-books; allowing authors to keep 70% of revenues.

One catch: they will only take on authors who are represented by an agency who has signed an agreement with Perseus!

Julie Bosman of The New York Times has this to say:

The Perseus Books Group has created a distribution and marketing service that will allow authors to self-publish their own e-books, the company said on Sunday.

The new service will give authors an alternative to other self-publishing services and a favorable revenue split that is unusual in the industry: 70 percent to the author and 30 percent to the distributor. Traditional publishers normally provide authors a royalty of about 25 percent for e-books.

The service arrives as authors are increasingly looking for ways to circumvent the traditional publishing model, take advantage of the infinite shelf space of the e-book world and release their own work. That’s especially the case for reviving out-of-print books whose rights have reverted back to the author.

Bloomsbury, a publisher based in Britain, said on Wednesday it had created a new publishing arm that would release digital-only titles. Companies like Open Road Integrated Media have successfully published digital editions of backlist books whose rights were not held by a publisher.

The new Perseus unit, called Argo Navis Author Services, will be available only to authors who are represented by an agency that has signed an agreement with Perseus. David Steinberger, the president and chief executive of the Perseus Books Group, said that the company had made an agreement with one major literary agency: Janklow & Nesbit Associates, whose authors include Ann Beattie, Anne Rice and Diane Johnson. Curtis Brown Ltd., which represents Karen Armstrong and Jim Collins, is also close to signing an agreement to make Argo Navis available to their authors. Perseus is in discussions with more than a dozen other agencies.

Read and learn more

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Bringing Books Back From The Dead ... And Preserving For Posterity

2011-09-28T21:56:00.001-06:00

Discovering old literary masterpieces (40, 60, 80 and 100 plus years old) ... like stumbling upon great old movies (and actors) ... is a special joy that awakens the forgotten talent of past artists and gives them a sort of rebirth and appreciation.

Bloomsbury Publishing, with their new purely digital imprint Bloomsbury Reader 'has signed up a string of authors including Monica Dickens, great grand-daughter of Charles, politicians Alan Clark and Ted Heath, crime writer H.R.F. Keating and novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett.'

For now, Bloomsbury Reader will be concentrating on out-of-print crime and romance genres.

Mike Collett-White, writing for Reuters, has this to say about the Bloomsbury Reader "raising books from the dead" venture:

Bloomsbury venture to bring books "back from dead"

Bloomsbury Publishing, home to the Harry Potter books in Britain, launched its first purely digital imprint on Wednesday which it said would bring out-of-print titles "back from the dead".

Bloomsbury Reader has signed up a string of authors including Monica Dickens, great grand-daughter of Charles, politicians Alan Clark and Ted Heath, crime writer H.R.F. Keating and novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett.

The publisher is focusing on books which are out of print and where all English-language rights have reverted back to the author or the author's estate.

In several cases, for example Clark's famous political diaries, some of an author's work is still in print and remains with the original publisher. Those books that are not will be digitally published by Bloomsbury Reader.

"In my experience, if people read a book by an author and they love that author, they suddenly want to read everything by that author and that's where this can fit in," said Stephanie Duncan, digital media director at Bloomsbury Publishing.

"Once you've read every Inspector Ghote mystery then you think, well what else has H.R.F. Keating written, and that's where Bloomsbury Reader comes in because we'll be delivering all those books," she told Reuters in an interview.

Read and learn more

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Should You Judge A Book By It's Cover?

2011-09-24T21:54:00.000-06:00

Judge a book by it's cover? No, definitely not when you are applying the golden rule RE judging humans (which we shouldn't do anyway, but, being imperfect Homo sapiens we do anyway) ... never judge the worth of a human being only by outward appearances.

But, judging a book is another ball game altogether. In fact, a good, pertinent cover could very well be a game changer in the success of the book.

With that in mind, here is an interesting insight into book covers by Andrew Pantoja on Publishing Perspectives ... with some great developing resources for all levels of competence and budget:

How Self-Published Authors Get Their Covers Right

Design-it-yourself or hire a pro? Either way, you want to weigh your options carefully.

For self-published authors visibility is key. Generating visibility takes time and persistence and includes everything from a Twitter feed to commissioned book reviews (John's Note: I have trouble with these type reviews). But a great book cover can generate more buzz and visibility than most social marketing plans and pay-to-play endorsements.

And in today’s online world, a book’s packaging -– binding, paper stock, etc. –- is thrown out the window. Online, the only distinguishing feature is the cover. With online book sales growing, and e-books taking off, cover design has become more important.

“If an e-book cover appeals to someone and speaks well on the book’s behalf,” said Chris O’Byrne who heads up The E-book Editor, “I think it could have a huge impact on whether a reader buys it or not.”

Without the budget or marketing team of a big publishing house, self-pub authors have to weigh their design options carefully. Options vary depending on the author’s skill set, time frame and resources.

A convenient option is to work with outfits like The E-book Editor that include a cover design as an add-on to their editing and digital conversion services. The E-book Editor charges $99 for e-book covers and $199 for print book covers. But only about 50% of the authors O’Byrne works with request a cover design. What are the other authors choosing to do?

The most affordable and in some cases cost-free option is to do it yourself.

Read and learn more

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Getting Your Book Published ... Efficiently!

2011-09-21T20:17:00.000-06:00

Joanna Penn (The Creative Penn) ... I admire her and her hard work and entrepreneurial skills; have followed her for some time, took advice from and learned tons just reading her publishing journey from her postings online.

She just had a "coaching session in public" with Corrina Gordon-Barnes from You Inspire Me to help Corinna self-publish her first book.

This is done in interview format and is literally crammed full of golden links to incisive self-publishing resources and go-to experts in the exploding self-publishing industry ... editing, cover designers, ISBN resources, legitimate reviewers, etc.

This video and written coaching/learning session is just too good not to pass along:

How To Publish Your Book
by Joanna Penn on September 21, 2011

It’s fantastic to talk with passionate people who take action on their dreams.

Corrina Gordon-Barnes from You Inspire Me is a coach helping others turn their dreams into businesses. In this interview, I help her with information on self-publishing her first book. It’s like a coaching session in public! We have a lot of fun laughs but there’s also a lot of valuable information if you are just starting out in your publishing journey.

In the interview, we discuss:

How I got started with self-publishing

and how The Creative Penn has evolved. How the publishing world is global now and the options are fantastic. Even if you want a traditional book deal, it’s good to know the options.

Self-publishing is not just a negative end-result of being rejected. There are now people actively choosing to self-publish. There are people with Kindle success who have got book deals because of it, and also authors leaving traditional publishing to go indie. It is a fast-moving world right now.

Vanity publishing vs self-publishing/indie and print on demand

I explain the difference between vanity publishing/assisted publishing and self-publishing/indie-publishing. I’m all for author services but not thousands of dollars for a load of printed books in your garage. Indie publishing does involve partners e.g. book design, ebook formatting, editing.

How print on demand publishing works. You load your book and each sale gets printed and sent, so there is no upfront bulk cost, no postage and packaging, no storage. Options include: Lulu.com, Createspace.com, LightningSource.com or Blurb.com. These all have varied packages for publishers and there are pros and cons of each. I get very excited about print on demand (here, I explain how it changed my life!) All these sites have good help information. You can also order books directly from the site, not from Amazon so you get it cheaper.

NOTE: It now looks as if Amazon has changed the way they work with other companies and CreateSpace may be the best option. Read this article on Amazon & Lightning Source: End of an era.

A book designer like Joel Friedlander, will give you print ready files. If you work with a site directly, there will also be wizards and ways they can help you. There are options for all levels of knowledge.

ISBNs can be bought per country – I mention Thorpe Bowker which is for US and AU, but it is Nielsen for UK. Also, check out this page on ISBN from TheBookDesigner

On pricing and print books – and we discuss the options for Corrina who wants to include the audios for her book. She was going to include the audio within the book and include it in the price so the book would be more expensive. I suggest perhaps selling the audio package separately so people will pick up the book and may buy the extra.

Kindle publishing

Corrina starts by suggesting she will start with print and then do ebook later. I explain my lessons learned and why it’s a good idea to do ebook first. (1) People will pick up any mistakes and you can fix them more quickly than with a print book (especially if your print book is in In Design or another package professionally formatted) – but you can upload a new version with any print on demand (2) You can get reviews on the Kindle version early and they will synch with the print book when it’s up (3) You can start earning money earlier as the print book takes longer to get ready.

Read and learn more

Reformatting Publishing as We Know It ... Even Today's Publishing!

2011-09-17T21:47:00.000-06:00

Many individuals, companies, technologies and other entities have been, are presently involved in or are aspiring to do just that ... reformat or redo publishing as we know it.

In fact, a lot of reformatting has already taken place, right?

Now Google is getting ready to enter and 'improve' the social publishing genre. It’s not just about sharing content anymore, it’s about apps that magically reformat content that’s out there ... for a better sharing experience!

Technology is moving at warp speed, and much is above my head anyway :), but you will find these details from Silicon Republic.com reported by John Kennedy deliciously riveting and informative:

Google wants to reformat the publishing business

It has emerged that Google is about to take on the social publishing revolution and beat early proponents like Flipboard and Pulse by helping the genre to flourish on its Android platform for smartphones and tablets.

Anyone who is familiar with apps like Flipboard – an elegant iPad app that takes feeds from Facebook, Twitter and a plethora of mainstream publications liked Forbes and the New Yorker and turns them into an elegant table-top magazine – will realise that the era of social publishing is well and truly upon us.

It’s not just about sharing, it’s about apps that elegantly reformat content that’s out there – whether it’s an online news piece, a blog or just a tweet – for your reading/viewing pleasure.

Apps like Pulse on both iOS and Android devices beautifully rend all your feeds from Google Reader into a tabular array to ensure you miss nothing.

It has emerged that Google is now working on a product that will take content from Google+ and other social sources to compete with Flipboard and Pulse in the growing social magazine space.

Read and learn more

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The Epitome of Great Writing Translation - Coming to America!

2011-09-14T20:13:00.001-06:00

I have often thought about all the great writing and written stories/ideas born in other countries and wished I could read these works in my native language; to really get a first-hand idea of what people in other parts of the world were reading, thinking, appreciating and talking about ... Know what I mean?

There have been translated works done before, but now we have a company devoted to translating all kinds of great modern and classic literature ... AND the translations are accomplished by reknowned authors in their own right!

Introducing Europa Editions.

Brittany Hazelwood of Publishing Perspectives writes this and interviews Michael Reynolds, Editor-in-chief, Europa Editions:

From Italy to NYC: Europa Editions Translates Success

“We feel there is a lot of good work out there . . . our job as publishers is to find it and publish it so that American readers can know what is being read, appreciated and talked about in other parts of the world.”

NEW YORK: “We are not peddling literature in translation as if it were a medicine that could cure all ills,” says Michael Reynolds, Editor-in-chief of Europa Editions. “We believe in reading, in literature, and we feel there is a lot of good work out there . . . our job as publishers is to find it and publish it so that American readers can know what is being read, appreciated and talked about in other parts of the world.”

Founded in 2005, Europa has emerged as one of the premier publishers of translated fiction in the United States, first coming to the attention of readers after the surprise success of its 2008 translation of Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which started with a print run of 15,000 and has gone on to sell and extraordinary 800,000 copies so far.

“It’s been,” says Reynolds, “like riding a wave.”

The surfing analogy comes perhaps a little too naturally to Reynolds, who was born in Australia. But like his list, he’s both eclectic and extremely international, having emigrated in his 20s, living on and off in the United States before settling in Italy. There, while running a literary festival in Rome, Reynolds heard the owners of the publishing house Edizioni EO were interested in launching a new publishing house in the U.S. He landed the gig.

In the intervening six years, Europa has published 115 titles — typically doing 20 books a year, a little more than half of which are in translation. The staff has grown to three, including Reynolds, publisher Kent Carroll, publicist Julia Haav, while the production, sales and marketing managers support Europa from Rome.

The publisher is continuing to expand operations as well. In August, Europa launched a new imprint, Tonga Books, in which prominent writers pick the titles. The first selections were made by Alice Sebold and include Alexander Maksik’s You Deserve Nothing, which has already won high praise from critics, and Ian Holding’s Of Beasts and Beings. In November, Europa will open a London office, with plans to launch a first full season — 15 books selected from the most successful US publications — in the UK in January. The director of the UK operation will be announced just prior the Frankfurt Book Fair.

We recently spoke with Reynolds, who now lives in New York, about Europa’s unique market position and plans for the future. Be warned: Reynolds issues some tall orders to emerging editors and publishers in the world of literary translation that have kept Europa strong throughout the years.

PP: How would you characterize Europa’s publishing philosophy?

It’s an extension of the original idea of Sandro Ferri and Sandra Ozzola. They started publishing authors from Eastern Europe in Italy about 35 years ago, when very few other publishers were doing so. Europa Editions is an extension of this same idea. Six years ago when the company was founded there were so few non-anglophone authors being published in America. It struck us as a shame that readers had no access to these authors, and, at the same time, it presented itself as a business opportunity.

How have you developed such an avid fan base in such a short time?

Read and learn more

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Publishers’ Why’s and Wherefore’s When Migrating to Digital (are all the damn apostrophes correct?)

2011-09-12T16:37:00.000-06:00

Indeed, when the current publishing upheaval began (it seems just a little while ago in the scheme of things) and the conqueror ‘Digital’ came swaggering into the publishing world, publishers were at first completely devastated; then were bombarded by all kinds of options and questions for their very survival!

You can just imagine publishers’ mental angst deciding “Should I get out of this rapidly changing fireball of an industry or should I admit that the old ways are going down the drain and commit to learning a whole new process … dealing, perhaps, with an entirely new and separate tech industry?”

Karina Mikhil (pictured), a publishing executive with a Master’s in Publishing from New York University, has some excellent questions and analyses that will help these publishing execs and their firms reach a viable decision.

From Karina Mikhil in Publishing Perspectives:

Migrating to Digital Publishing? The Six Key Questions to Ask

Here are the six “Ws” you need to ask yourself before transitioning from the old to the new: why, who, what, when, which, and where.

The publishing industry is not generally known for being agile or quick to change, yet it is facing one of its biggest times of change probably since the invention of the printing press. At the heart of this is the migration to digital.

Prior to this migration, a time-tested process and structure existed for getting books printed: from acquisition, copyediting and typesetting, to author reviews and proofreading, to print. Although hiccups occurred and no two companies had the exact same workflow, the foundations were the same and ensured quality products got released in expected time frames.

Whether publishers are dealing with online content or e-books, digital only or both print and digital, publishers are now faced with more questions than answers as to how to incorporate the new with the old. Below I provide a framework for those questions, using the traditional 6 Ws: why, who, what, when, which, and where.

Why?

Of the six questions, this is the easiest to answer. No publisher can afford to ignore the digital any longer: the tipping point has come and gone; more and more e-books and e-readers are being sold weekly; and authors will begin demanding this, if they haven’t already. And traditional publishers need to offer all things digital to compete with the emerging “digital publishers.”

Who?

Even prior to the migration to digital, publishers would do one of two things to keep costs down: outsource as much as possible, keeping headcount down, or the reverse, which is hire talent to keep all services and costs internal. With digital, publishers have to make this decision anew. Should they invest in new talent from other industries (e.g., technology) or in educating existing talent, those who are eager to learn and have a background in publishing? Or should they turn to one of the many conversion and content solutions providers that exist in the market?

What?

Read and learn more

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Berlin’s 'Txtr' Goes From Stumbling E-Reader Startup to Global Digital Distributor

2011-09-07T20:35:00.000-06:00

Txtr wanted to create an e-reader ... and actually did produce the first German e-reader prototype ... BUT, increasing competition and speed of associated technology, caused the Txtr powers-to-be to shy away.

What they did do, instead, was to give up developing the hardware RE an e-reader device and devoted their energies to creating apps and platforms for distributing e-reader content.

In other words, Txtr turned would-be, growing, e-reader competitors into clients! A neat business coup, indeed.

Now, this from Amanda DeMarco in Publishing Perspectives:

Txtr Transformed: From E-readers to E-book Distribution

Berlin’s txtr has evolved from a stumbling e-reader startup into a global digital distributor with e-bookstores in 12 countries, 400,000 titles, and several blue chip partners.

BERLIN: In 2009, Berlin-based startup txtr debuted a prototype e-reader — the first for a German company — at the Frankfurt Book Fair. But sometime in early 2010, however, that became an overly ambitious and much-delayed e-reader. On top of the difficulties of getting the device right, an incoming wave of competing e-readers from Asia “looked scary,” says Thomas Leliveld, txtr’s Chief Commercial Officer. It was clear there was “no money to be made” if txtr continued down the path it was on.

Distribution Instead of Devices, Clients Instead of Competitors

Developing hardware is an unforgiving process; you can’t sell an e-reader in beta. Software and services, on the other hand, can be improved incrementally, so txtr shifted its focus to distributing e-books, with device-makers (former competitors) as its main customers.

Basically, if you make an e-reading device, you probably want that device to have its own store. But if you put your resources into the difficult work of developing an e-reader, you may not be well-equipped to create such a platform. That’s where txtr steps in and provides a white-label store for your device. Now that “scary” wave of devices from Asia represents potential clients for txtr.

The key word in txtr’s online bookstore strategy is local: local language, locally relevant content, local payment infrastructure, local management. It has e-book stores in operation in 12 countries, with more opening in the coming months. (txtr accesses experts in each country via a German organization.) txtr powers Acer’s Lumiread store, as well as Asus’s store, and Bol.com (the largest Dutch online bookstore), among others. In all, the company offers more than 400,000 titles available in Western languages; txtr offers 50,000 of those titles in German and has standing distribution agreements with publishers such as Random House and Holtzbrinck.

If you ask Leliveld about competition from certain behemoth online stores, he’ll enthusiastically point out that the market for e-books is expanding rapidly, everywhere, and will probably continue to do so for a long time. There’s room at the table, which is evident when you look at txtr’s recent successes.

An investment from 3M — making it txtr’s largest stakeholder — came as a surprise to many when it was announced in May of this year. The two parties had started talks in April of 2010, and discovered they had “clear similar interests.” In their first collaboration, txtr is providing the e-reading platform for 3M’s Cloud Library eBook Lending Service (but not the hardware, as has been rumored).

Read and learn more (and watch a demonstration of 3M’s Cloud Library in action:

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E-Books and Serialization

2011-09-05T22:46:00.001-06:00

Stories told in bits or chunks, rather than in a complete book format all at once, is an old, established, storytelling technique known as 'serials' ... and was best suited for magazine or newspaper formats.

Apparently, e-books are now going to experiment with this type of storytelling structure. In fact, the idea was conceived and brought to the forefront almost simultaneously by two different entities thousands of miles apart!

I think serialization of e-books is a great (actually inevitable) idea ... What do you think?

This from booktrade.info

How To Come Second In A Publishing Race ... And Still Win

It's good news all round that an independent publisher can gallop hard and fast, lose by a nose to an author: and still make friends and influence people.

It happened to BeWrite Books when renowned best-seller Roz Morris – a world-class thoroughbred – pipped them at the post on the same new idea both, unknowingly and thousands of miles apart, had been working on simultaneously for months. And it was smiles, good humor and fun all round when BeWrite Books sent an email of congratulations to Roz on her win. But the story got better ... and it's about how to win even when you lose.

Although they'd never met before, BB chief editor Neil Marr and Roz made a virtual, long-distance handshake to team up, there and then, to share and broadcast the new system they had developed independently. They co-wrote a special article telling all here at: http://www.bewritebooks.blogspot.com/.

It's all about a new approach to ebook novel structuring that allows a fully prepared novel to be built, satisfyingly to the reader, in four regularly and shortly-paced episodes of equal length, craftily making use of the old and well loved newspaper and magazine system that pre-dates even Dickens and Doyle to build a complete book in bite-sized chunks that all but died out in the latter half of the last centuries as newspapers and magazines cut back on serialized fiction or folded.

But the new scheme is subtly differences to the old grand masters in its fresh approach to serialization and marketing works.

BeWrite Books was busily preparing the first six titles from its existing catalog for simultaneous release in the new form in late September, when Roz, took them by surprise and released her own new book, My Memories of a Future LIFE, last week.

Read and learn more

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Editors - What they Make in 2011 - Too Much or Not Enough?

2011-08-30T09:10:00.000-06:00

I have discussed 'editors' in some detail in previous posts.

There are many different types of editors ... from the wordsmithing, novelist-improving type --> all the way to the magazine management, operational business type (e.g. editor-in-chief, executive editor, senior editor, associate editor, managing editor, etc., ad infinitum!).

This FOLIO Magazine survey reflects the salaries of the latter business type (by category); where, I strongly suspect, the most money is.

From FOLIO by Stefanie Botelho:

2011 Editorial Salary Survey

While all levels of editors are finding themselves with increasing responsibilities and decreasing resources, at least some of those surveyed are seeing relief in their paychecks. However, the editorial categories that experienced monetary gain are certainly earning their dollars.

A vast amount of editors who participated in FOLIO:’s 2011 Editorial Salary Survey, conducted by Readex Research, claimed digital duties added the most to their job descriptions this year. One respondent says, “I am now in charge of managing edit for the iPad, tracking print contributions for our dotcom and repurposing content for our dotcom as well.” In addition to the health of digital products, social media site management is another digital responsibility put under the care of editors surveyed here.

Perhaps in a reflection of these additional responsibilities (or the slowly stabilizing economy), three out of the four geographic regions surveyed experienced a spike in editorial director’s/editor-in-chief’s salary; only the West experienced a drop, polling $83,000 in 2010 and $72,400 in 2011.

Advertising revenue is a major concern for editors in 2011, as a digital answer to decreasing print ad revenue has not yet been cemented. One respondent says of their biggest challenges, “Along with the increased focus on revenue and declining resources, I also have to counter the perception that print is dead.” Another respondent sees building new revenue streams to replace faltering print ad resources as one of the most formidable challenges at their publication.

Overall, respondents to this year’s survey are interested in keeping business viable, maintaining a capable staff and staying relevant in the evolving landscape. Editors find satisfaction in their jobs in a variety of ways through their products and industry. One respondent says, “I value seeing a finished product in my hands, happy readers and friendship in the industry."

SALARY BY CATEGORY: EDITORIAL DIRECTOR/EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Overall, the editorial director/editor-in-chief sector saw its pay increase in 2011. While there is still a sizeable gap between genders, both female and male editorial executives experienced rises in salaries this year; male editoral directors are up at $99,300 from 2010’s $96,900, and their female counterparts earned $77,600, up from 2010’s $74,200.

Editorial directors in the New York city area saw a fruitful 2011, with their mean salaries up about $10,000 to $108,900. The same group earned a mean of $98,200 in 2010.

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Prominent French Publisher, La Martiniere, Reaches E-Book Detente with Google

2011-08-27T22:07:00.000-06:00

La Martiniere, the third largest publisher in France (behind Hachette and Editis), fought a five year battle to stop Google from scanning and selling (mostly out-of-print) copyrighted works willy-nilly ... and they have successfully reached a detente.

I wouldn't have thought it would be so hard, even for out-of-print works, given that they are supposedly copyrighted for life ... unless the copyright ownership was in question.

Anyway, publishing intrigue is alive and well and shouting all over the place and across formats and platforms.

This from Barbara Casassus as reported in TheBookSeller.com:

La Martinière and Google sign agreement

French publisher La Martinière has dropped its legal action against Google and signed an agreement with it to scan specified out-of-print French language titles.

The publisher was locked in a five-year long legal battle against Google for having digitised copyrighted books without permission. The pact is similar to the one finalised last month with Hachette Livre, which was aimed to serve as a model for other French houses.

The difference is that La Martinière and Google will draw up a catalogue including both the titles already scanned in partnership with American libraries and those to be covered by the latest deal, a Google France spokesperson said. The publisher will decide which titles will be withdrawn and which will be scanned.

Several thousand titles could be involved, La Martinière c.e.o. Hervé de La Martinière said. The group will be able to sell the scanned books through the Google e-books platform on a revenue-sharing basis, with the publisher earning the undisclosed majority share, the Google spokesperson added.

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E-Books Dangerous to Writers and Their Livelihoods?

2011-08-24T21:15:00.000-06:00

The number of discussions RE just how monetarily successful writers will be choosing to self-publish, even if royalties are higher, are increasing ... but, dividing into two distinct camps of thought.

You probably know the basics already: Self-published e-books are bringing higher royalties of 25% to 75% (or thereabouts), but, of very low unit priced products (say the current standard of $2.99 per e-book) ... This scenario compared with a lower traditional royalty of 10% to 15% of much higher priced books of say $20 to $30 per book ... etc, etc, ad infinitum :)

I feel all this pricing jumble in the new publishing jungle will settle out eventually ... AND, I think in the writers favor.

After all, the two essential ingredients in publishing are the writer and the consumer reader ... everyone else in between are middlemen, costly and becoming less needed.

Noted British author, Graham Swift, has a different take on the new digital self-publishing, and his view is discussed on the exceptional group blog, TechDirt, along with a rebuttal:

Author Says eBooks Will Hurt Authors Because Of Royalty Rates

from the but-the-percentages-say-otherwise dept

Opinions on the emergence of eBooks in the modern era come with all manner of widely varied opinions. We saw J.K. Rowling go from staunchly refusing to offer her works as eBooks to routing around her publisher and offering them directly to her fans. Barry Eisler turned down a huge publishing contract to self-publish his eBooks, even as the Mystery Writers of America were telling Joe Konrath, Eisler's friend, self-publishing meant he wasn't a "real author". And, of course, we have the always prevalent opposed viewpoints of the benefits of carrying your digital library everywhere versus the preference for the look and feel of a physical hardcopy tome.

But one argument I haven't heard before (and I spend a decent amount of time reading and learning about the publishing world, for obvious reasons) is that eBooks are dangerous to the future of young authors because the royalty rates won't support them making a living. That's the argument Graham Swift made in an article in The Telegraph by Nick Collins. Graham is quoted as saying:

“The e-book does seem at the moment to threaten the livelihood of writers, because the way in which writers are paid for their work in the form of e-books is very much up in the air. I think the tendency will be that writers will get even less than they get now for their work and sadly that could mean that some potential writers will see that they can't make a living, they will give up and the world would be poorer for the books they might have written, so in that way it is quite a serious prospect.”

Swift is an award-winning author and, as such, I assume he's as or more informed about the publishing world than I am, but I'm having trouble rectifying his speculation on declining royalty rates for eBooks with how such royalties are handled now. Unfortunately, because there is some variance in how royalties are handled in the publishing world, particularly with fiction, there are some distinctions to be made with how this all works.

Read and learn more

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Trouble With the World?

2011-08-17T23:04:00.002-06:00

After being privileged with a kaleidoscope of world travel and experience ... and after thoughtful reflection, I have come to the conclusion that:

"The trouble with the world is that it's always one drink behind." :)

The above personal quote came from a very famous person ... Anyone want to hazard a guess?

Is Amazon a Danger Lurking in the Publishing Industry?

2011-08-16T21:34:00.001-06:00

Is Amazon getting too big for its britches? Creating and positioning itself on a monopolistic throne where it can wield too much dictatorial power?

Victoria Barnsley, UK CEO of HarperCollins, thinks Amazon's presence and goals in publishing today are a big concern and says so in an article by Graeme Neill on TheBookseller.com:

Amazon publishing a "concern"—Barnsley

Amazon's move into publishing is a "concern" and the business is close to being in a monopolistic position, according to the c.e.o. of HarperCollins.

Victoria Barnsley was the latest book trade figure to appear on BBC Radio 4's "The Future of the Book" segment on "The World at One", broadcast today (16th August).

In a wide-ranging interview, she said she felt hardback prices would increase as they

increased in quality; digital fiction sales would be 50% of the category's total within two years; touched upon the News International phone-hacking row; and said the agent Andrew Wylie has apologised to her following a recent row where he accused the publisher of acting in a "shrill and punitive way" towards authors.

Barnsley described Amazon as a "very very powerful global competitor" of HarperCollins. She said: "I think Amazon's foray into book publishing . . . is obviously a concern . . . They are this weird thing. We can them 'frenemies'. They are also a very important customer of ours and they have done fantastic things for the book industry. I have mixed views about them but there's no doubt they are very very powerful now and in fact they are getting close to being in a monopolistic situation."

She described agents' attempts to secure greater digital royalties for their authors as a "bone of contention" between both parties. She said: "We would argue that we actually invest a huge amount in authors, invest a huge amount in marketing and reach. It is a bone of contention. I don't think we should be [in dispute] because what we add is of enormous value, which, say, the digital technology companies don't give."

Read and learn more

Related article: Amazon as publisher: What does it mean?

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Publishing is One of Few Sectors Growing in Today's Economy

2011-08-11T22:52:00.000-06:00

The traditional publishing industry was completely devastated by the new digital technology. Not totally knocked out, mind you, just put in a state of semiconsciousness.

When the first effects of the field-leveling tech blew out heavy printing, storage and shipping requirements; did away with the need for physical distribution; cut to damn near zero the finished manuscript to published/for sale timeline; redefined the scope for agents and editors; etc, etc, it had management in a tizzy!

But, when the tech storm dust settled a little, management began to better visualize how the new tech could be absorbed, understood and assimilated into existing business products and goals and new biz models began to appear ... now traditional publishing (TP) is offering dual media formats and a ton of apps for mobiles, etc.

All this has made the publishing industry, believe it or not, a growth sector in the current, dismal economy ... according to the well-respected Bookstats, an industry research and study group.

These details by Caitlin Bronson in ThirdAge.com:

E-Books Spur Publishing Industry Growth

The popularity of e-books has pushed the publishing industry to become one of the few sectors of the economy that is actually growing. The Christian Science Monitor reports that a Bookstats study puts the industry at a growth of 3.1 percent from 2008 to 2010.

At the helm of the upward trend are e-books, whose sales rose about 39 percent during the same time period. E-books seem to be the clear saving grace of the industry, whose mass market, hardcover and paperback sales actually fell about two percent over the same three years. The ease and relative inexpensive cost of e-readers like Nook and Kindle appeal to readers who may not otherwise carry a paperback around in their pocket.

Textbooks are also helping the industry grow, with sales up 23 percent, the study said.

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Sayonara to Traditional Publishing?

2011-08-06T19:04:00.000-06:00

Traditional publishing has not disappeared just yet; but it is irrevocably changed!

I don't believe trad pub will ever disappear. I see it morphing some more and settling into a type of "status" or "collectable" entity.

At any rate, I just finished reading an article in the Today's Zaman (your gateway to Turkish daily news) by Musa Igrek that gives a most succinct, complete story behind the emergence and acceptance of self-publishing and the resulting, traumatic impact on the publishing industry as a whole:

End of the road for professional publishing?

The world of publishing is gradually becoming more and more dominated by technology.

Up-and-coming authors can now have their books published in e-book format through the self-publishing system, first introduced by the giant online bookstore Amazon.com.

Authors who self-publish bypass the publishing house phase, drastically reducing the cost of having a book published in hardcopy. The author can sell their e-book at whatever price they wish, and through programs available on self-publishing sites, can decide each and every detail regarding the book -- from typeface to cover design, from editing to distribution. This way, the author also holds all the rights to his or her work. The system bypasses numerous levels in having a book published, such as the editor, the publisher and the distributor, as well as the marketing stage.

The global market in self-publishing is constantly growing, particularly because it offers an area of showcase for first-time aspiring authors. There are authors who have sold hundreds of thousands of books through self-publishing. The arena of self-publishing also serves as a showcase for publishers to pick from, so self-publishing authors can sometimes be picked up by a publishing house, too. Turkish online bookstore Idefix unveiled last week its upcoming self-publishing project called “Açık Kitap” (Open Book), which will be launched next year. The company will start serving self-publishing authors in exactly the way Amazon.com does. The project’s director, Bora Ekmekçi, says the website does not intend to make a leap to the publishing business with the launch of its self-publishing branch. “We will be providing amateur writers with tools with which they can produce their own e-books and a platform on which they can publish their works,” Ekmekçi explains. “This project will set [book] production free, there will be more material [to read] out there and it will also help publishers discover new authors.”

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Much Lighter and Cheaper Digital Textbooks on iPads

2011-08-03T23:17:00.000-06:00

I posted on the coming (and I predicted explosive) growth of digital textbooks last year on my Publishing/Writing Blog and here on this blog.

This post gives the latest advances ... including popularity, growth and forecast figures.

Show me the money! AND the savings and convenience to students ... These e-textbooks (some with interactive, complex content) are probably the greatest invention since the vibrator :)

Three companies: Inkling (a startup stand alone), CourseSmart (owned by textbook publishers Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Wiley, MacMillan and Cengage) and Kno (an Education software company) are the main players in the digital textbook field to date.

Details here by Jefferson Graham in USA Today:

Matt MacInnis believes college textbooks are heavy, expensive and outdated. That's why he decided to reinvent them as a multimedia experience for the iPad.

"We're trying to bring textbooks forward to the 21st century," he says.

San Francisco-based Inkling is the start-up he formed to bring next-generation textbooks to the iPad. Chapters of such educational tomes can be purchased for $2.99 a pop at the iTunes App Store. In early tests, students rave. Several colleges have jumped on board, using Inkling textbooks with college-mandated iPads for fall courses.

Investors like what they see. Inkling today will announce a second round of funding for the company, $17 million from Tenaya Capital, Jafco Ventures and Sequoia Capital. This follows the initial funding from Sequoia and others, including publishers McGraw-Hill and Pearson.

"This shows we're trying to scale the business in a big way," says MacInnis. "We're hoping it shows just how substantial our vision is."

Some $4.5 billion worth of textbooks were sold in 2010, according to the Association of American Publishers. Education consultant Xplana expects digital textbooks to represent 3% of sales in 2011, growing to 44% by 2017.

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Tablet Publishing Made Easy

2011-07-30T22:01:00.000-06:00

A free platform that allows us to gussy up our content for rapid and easy publication on tablet computers ... This is serious advancement and way cool :)

"absolutely everyone can use the free platform to make their content look beautiful on a tablet. Today, Onswipe is self-serve and officially open to the public."

And I repeat, it's FREE.

This from thenextweb.com by Courtney Boyd Myers:

Onswipe’s easy tablet publishing is now self serve and open to the public

We first met with Jason L. Baptiste and Andres Barreto, the founders of Onswipe on a snowy day in late January in New York City for an interview titled, Forget apps, Onswipe is the future of publishing. The two entrepreneurs were poised for the age of that tablet, both passionate writers who wanted to make their content look beautiful on the iPad. Armed with skills in coding and software development, and support from TechStars‘ mentors, Baptiste and Barreto, along with their third co-founder Mark Bao launched Onswipe on June 21st of this year.

Onswipe aims to make the publishing experience more enjoyable for the reader from both the editorial experience and the advertising side. In June, Onswipe launched with less than 10 partners including The Next Web, Gary Vaynerchuk, Hollywood.com, Stocktwits and Geek.com, as well as Icon partners Marie Claire, in an ad partnership with American Express and Slate, in an ad partnership with Sprint. Mindshare shared the following stats with us on behalf of Sprint for its advertising deal with Slate using the Onswipe platform. According to Mindshare, Onswipe caused an increase of 23% in pageviews and 39% increase in unique visitors. Impressive.

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Why Writers Self-Publish ... Three Journeys

2011-07-26T23:08:00.000-06:00

With all the new tech programs/platforms accessing all kinds of new reading devices, publishing with professional flair has been delivered to our very own back yards ... and cheaply, at that.

Here are three brief adventures in self-publishing that answer some questions and provide a certain insight:

Authors avoid the slush pile by publishing their books themselves

By Rose Russell of The Toledo Blade, republished in the Detroit Free Press

Everybody has a story to tell, and today many people are telling them in print, thanks to the technology and self-publishing companies.

Although thousands of books are published each year, people who know their stories won't capture the interest of big publishing houses turn to self-publishing. Some have good experiences, some don't. Some spend lots of money, others spend nominal amounts.

All in all, though, little compares to finally seeing one's own name and title on the cover of a book.

Self-publishing isn't easy, however. In addition to writing their stories, authors do their own research, marketing and promotion.

Rejection from some of the major players in book publishing sent Holland resident John C. Moore out on his own. Some of the 46 rejections he received for his first book, "A Positive Attitude is a Muscle: A Managed Stress Survivor's Manual," that he published in 2001, cited excessive title length or a need for rewriting.

"Some rejections were nice, but others really hurt you to read," he said. "One said I would never be published. I sent him one of my books with a nice note. He wrote back saying, 'Sometimes I'm wrong,'" said Moore, a retired vice president from the former Toledo Trust.

His second book, "Alvetta," named for his late wife, chronicles his journey during her last two years. Though it is intensely personal, it is a gripping story.

Up-front costs were about $695. All the work of self-publishing falls on the author's shoulders, and it sometimes shows, Moore said.

"If you go through 'Alvetta' and 'Stress,' you will find some errors. There is no one to help you do clean-up work. No one helps you with the marketing," he said.

But that won't stop Moore from self-publishing again. He is conducting research for another book he expects to have out in a couple of years.

Sometimes authors tap the skill of colleagues for help, as did Cindy Hampel of Royal Oak.

Her book, "It's Not Personal -- Lessons I've Learned from Dealing with Difficult Behavior," is available in paperback and on Kindle. She asked a friend in Detroit Working Writers to read and edit the work.

Hampel, a mother of three who is taking paralegal courses, said "I did not plan to write this type of book when I left my full-time job in media relations, I felt the calling, if you will, that God must have put these experiences in my path for a reason, and I grew compelled to write about them."

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'Highlighter' Digital Tool Gives Publishers More Analytics, Social Media Interactivity

2011-07-21T22:51:00.001-06:00

Highlighter, a new digital sharing tool launched 19 July 2011, will provide publishers with readers' reactions and interactions to their content and offer them social media interactivity.

This is a great tool and the plugin is FREE! Use it on blogs and other websites to allow readers to highlight content and share it with others on Facebook and Twitter.

Details provided by Gabe Habash in Publishers Weekly:

Highlighter Gives Publishers Extensive Analytics of Their Content

Publishers may soon find Highlighter, the new digital sharing tool launched July 19, to be an invaluable resource for accessing their audience’s reactions and interactions of their content.

Highlighter is a free plugin that allows users to highlight or annotate text from a site and then share it with friends on Facebook and Twitter, the idea being to give every Highligher-equipped blog or website a measure of social media interactivity.

For publishers, bloggers, and writers, Highlighter provides detailed analytics on which parts of your content are being highlighted and shared. The functions allow for a simple and efficient two-way conversation between publishers and their audience, with the intention being to increase users’ page views and time spent on the website.

Highlighter is the brainchild of Josh Mullineaux, Matt Blancarte, and Nate Whitehill, who previously founded Unique Blog Designs, a web and blog design company with over 35,000 publishing clients. This vast interaction with publishers led to the seed that became Highlighter.

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E-Books Rebuilding Academic Textbook Publishing

2011-07-17T09:00:00.001-06:00

Older, established, publishing business models have been falling like snowflakes lately.

Now, the academia textbook world is being remodeled by E-textbooks ... and this is really welcomed, I think, and should be a boon to the learning process!

This from BetaNews by Tim Conneally:

E-textbooks are destroying the old publishing business model

In May, Nature Publishing Group and California State University announced a three-year partnership to use $49 e-books for certain Biology classes over a more expensive and less versatile paper book. Soon, state universities in Texas and Florida will follow suit. While there are hundreds of startups pitching various ways to bring e-textbooks to universities, Nature's initiative is one of the first widespread e-textbook programs to come from the publishing industry.

The most interesting part?

In its 135 years in the publishing business, this is Nature's first attempt at a textbook.

It is not attempting to fall in line with the outdated textbook publishing model, but instead has redefined textbook publishing for the digital generation, so texts can be cheaper, more interactive and customizable, and more up-to-date.

"Our goal is to create a new frontier for the industry," said Vikram Savkar, Senior Vice President and Publishing Director at Nature Publishing. "One that isn't based on an idea of antagonism between publishers and learning institutions, but a collaboration between both sides that works well, and answers the needs of the two."

Savkar was at Pearson publishing for most of his career, and created the Education Division at Nature just a few years ago. In his time at Pearson, he published lots of textbooks, and knows the ins and outs of the industry and why interactive e-books are the answer to many of its problems.

Why are textbooks so expensive, and why won't e-books be the same?

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Will Cheap Android Tablets Give iPad a Race for the Future of Publishing?

2011-07-12T22:50:00.000-06:00

In the recent past, the slumping newspaper and magazine industries were drawn to Apple's iPad as the possible publishing savior for their products.

Of course, Apple had the only game in town in the recent past ... and with some bad management caveats at that; like not allowing the publishers access to the subscribers' demographic data.

All that is about to change; and I never thought for one moment that it wouldn't! I have posted on this issue previously.

BetaNews has the latest developments on this ever evolving issue in a report by Tim Conneally:

Still think iPad is the future of publishing? Philly papers offer cheap Android tablets to subscribers

The withering newspaper and magazine industries began to gravitate toward Apple's iPad as a possible anchor publishing outlet last year, but a pair of Philadelphia newspapers are taking a different approach and bundling cheap Android tablets with a subscription.

Last year, Conde Nast's Wired showed off an impressive iPad-optimized version of its magazine, and News Corp released The Daily, a subscription magazine designed from scratch for consumption on the iPad. These major ventures didn't simply re-format existent content for the iPad, but rather designed their content around the tablet itself.

The major hindrance here is that readers have to already own an iPad to get a subscription, so the audience will always be measured as a subset of iPad owners.

So the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News are taking an approach to distribution more similar to mobile phone companies. When a customer subscribes to a digital edition of one of these papers, they will get an Android tablet at as much as 50% off of its retail price.

This way, they are subscribers first and tablet owners second.

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Who's Best: Amazon Kindle E-Publishing or Barnes and Noble Nook E-Publishing?

2011-07-07T21:34:00.001-06:00

A quick and dirty comparison tonight offered by a writer/publisher of about 15 niche e-books.

Apparently, if you want speed of publishing process use the B&N Nook book publishing platform; if you want greater sales (but with slower publication management processes) use the Amazon Kindle book publishing platform.

At least that is the conclusion of Allen Harkleroad in this article from the Statesboro Business & Lifestyle Magazine:

Amazon Kindle Versus Barnes and Noble Nook Book Publishing - Six Months In and Kindle is Winning

With all the brouhaha over the Barnes and Noble Nook reader, I tested the publishing side to determine if either has a monetary advantage over the other. I am a self-published author with more than fifteen books and guides under my belt. Most of my books are available in print as well eBook formats, so for me the idea of testing sales of books on both devices was intriguing.

I have ten ebooks published at Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and at Barnes and Noble’s pubit. The process of adding new titles was faster and more streamlined at pubit than at kindle direct publishing. The books submitted to pubit appeared in the Barnes and Noble online catalog more quickly than the titles submitted to Amazon direct publishing. I am afraid though, that speed is pubit’s only advantage over Kindle direct publishing.

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The Journal of Universal Rejection (JofUR)

2011-07-02T21:49:00.000-06:00

Lets face it, people, rejection is a part of everyone's life! In matters of living and loving as well as publishing. So, we might as well get used to it, understand it and accept it ... Sort of like assholes.

BUT, we can do so with humor and thereby put rejection into proper perspective.

Therefore, I proudly introduce you to The Journal of Universal Rejection in this fine piece by Danielle White in the Sydney Morning Herald:

The upside of being turned down

It's undeniably universal. Whether it's personal relationships or publishing, we all loathe, if not fear, the "R" word — Rejection. The heartache of a manuscript returned unread; the shattered dream of being a best-selling author; the crushed self-esteem; the embarrassment, not to mention the growing pile of unpaid bills that jeer at you from the corner of your desk. There's no doubt about it, rejection bloody well hurts.

The late Lewis Grizzard, American writer and humorist, said that the longest walk in the world is not across the room to ask a woman to dance but rather the walk back across the room after the woman says no. In the publishing world, the longest walk is not the hard-slog research, the painstakingly disciplined, solitary and unpaid writing, or the long wait to hear back from the publisher but how you feel when the publisher says no.

It's not just that your work wasn't accepted but that you can't write, that you were a fool ever to think you could and you never have been and never will be good enough to get published, let alone be well regarded. Ouch!
This global thinking is often accompanied by a belief that rejection is an indictment of your being, that the publisher responsible for rejecting you and those whose works they accepted are infinitely superior to you.

A blog article, "Rejection Sucks" by Dr Harriet Lerner, for Psychology Today, suggests "the only sure way to avoid rejection is to sit mute in a corner and take no risks". Not much fun. But, she goes on to say, "if we choose to live courageously, we will experience rejection — and survive to show up for more".

Well, live courageously you can!

What is surely one of the most effective remedies for rejection since paracetamol comes the Journal of Universal Rejection (JofUR). In our fast-paced, highly pressured, economically squeezed world where unsolicited manuscripts are as unacceptable as instant coffee served in a polystyrene cup and where universities demand academics publish outrageous numbers of journal articles in elite peer-reviewed journals or perish, the JofUR brings some sanity to the madness: "Reprobatio Certa. Hora Incerta," (Rejection Certain. Honour Uncertain) claims the hero of the day.

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Related article: 50 Iconic Writers Who Were Repeatedly Rejected

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Self-published E-book Authors Earning a Living

2011-06-28T22:08:00.000-06:00

We've all heard about the 'superstars' (known as 'outliers' in the publishing industry) in the new and ever evolving self-publishing world (those with sales in the hundreds of thousands for a single month) ... you know, Amanda Hocking, Joe Konrath, John Locke, etc.

BUT, there are quite a number of self-publishers that are making a living selling anywhere from 800 to 20,000 e-books per month.

Details discussed in Publishing Perspectives by Robin Sullivan:

The New Midlist: Self-published E-book Authors Who Earn a Living

There have been many articles about self-published superstars like Amanda Hocking, Joe Konrath, and John Locke. While these success stories are noteworthy, we should look at them for what they are — outliers in the self-publishing world just as Stephen King and Stephenie Meyer are outliers in the big-six publishing industry. Most authors can never hope to reach sales in the hundreds of thousands for a single month, but there are more than a few who sell anywhere from 800 to 20,000. While selling books at this level would seem extraordinary by traditional publishing standards, the mere fact that so many self published authors have achieved this goal (with more being added each month), indicates that it is not an unusual occurrence.

Not only are these new mid-listers selling a lot of books, but they are also receiving significantly more money from each sale (the industry standard is a 25% royalty of net sales for e-books under contract by a big-six publisher). If a self-published author sells their book for $2.99 – $9.99, then Amazon will pay 70% ($2.09 – $6.99). Compare this to the $1.22 per book income (which needs to be shared with an agent) for a $6.99 e-book sold through a publisher. High volume combined with good revenue is providing self-published e-book authors five and six figure yearly incomes allowing them to quit their “day jobs” and make a living by doing what they love most–writing.

The Tipping Point

I regularly give lectures on the different options for publishing and up until recently my main point about self-publishing was the unprecedented control it provided. Recently I’ve had to change my presentations to also acknowledge that if you wish to maximize income then self-publishing, if done well, could provide the best revenue potential. A year ago I was definitely not making that statement — but a watershed moment occurred in October/November 2010. It was at this time that sales of e-books from previously unknown authors skyrocketed.

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E-Books ... A Major Shakeup is Coming

2011-06-23T23:38:00.000-06:00

Pottermore.com is coming! ... And bringing with it a real time, online lab that should flush out issues like e-book pricing, eliminating digital booksellers (i.e. Amazon) as the middleman, acceptance of a common format (i.e. ePub) acceptable to all devices across all platforms.

Phewwww! What a statement. Sounds like rocket science when it's only common sense.

This strategically, ingenious concept will force a faster solution to many bottlenecks created by the various device manufacturers and digital booksellers trying to kidnap the market for its own exclusive profit.

This could only be brought by something so popular and powerful unto itself that it would lend itself to an exclusive sales site, with its own rules, that would draw people away from the status quo.

That power is Harry Potter!

This from paidContent.org by Laura Hazard Owen:

Three Ways Pottermore.com Could Change Book Publishing

After a suspenseful buildup, J. K. Rowling has announced that Pottermore.com will be an e-bookstore, exclusively selling Harry Potter e-books and digital audiobooks. Pottermore could shake up digital publishing as much as the Harry Potter books first shook up print publishing over a decade ago. Here’s how.

Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) will be cut out as the middleman and could be forced to open up the Kindle to new book-publishing formats. Pottermore.com does not officially launch until October, and right now many details are still unclear. But we know that the site will be the only place to buy Harry Potter e-books and that they will be compatible with a range of devices. Rowling stressed that selling the books directly “means we can guarantee people everywhere are getting the same experience and at the same time,” and Pottermore CEO Rod Henwood told The Bookseller, “We want to make sure anyone who buys it can read it on any device. We are talking to the Kindles, the Apples, the Googles, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) to make sure they are compatible. We set the pricing, we maintain the policy of making them available to as many readers as possible.”

We don’t know if that means that Pottermore.com will be selling multiple editions of the Harry Potter books—in the Kindle format, say, alongside formats like EPUB—but it seems more likely that the site would sell e-books in just one format, probably EPUB. Right now, the Kindle doesn’t support the EPUB format. But if any author could get Amazon to change its policy, it’s J. K. Rowling. The Kindle has the largest market share of any e-reader in the U.S.—it’s believed to be between 60 and 65 percent—and it would be an incredibly dumb move for Amazon not to allow the Harry Potter e-books to be read on its device. The company would risk losing users to the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Kobo, and other devices that do support EPUB.

In fact, rumors that Amazon is going to start supporting EPUB have been floating around for awhile now, mainly in association with the news that the Kindle will support library lending this fall. Amazon should probably get on the EPUB train by July 31, when Pottermore.com is going to be opened up to a select million users.

Interesting experiments with pricing. Since Rowling is selling the e-books directly, she can do what she wants with pricing. Her UK publisher, Bloomsbury, and her U.S. publisher, Scholastic, are getting a cut, but these books are being ...

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A Memoir is a Memoir is a Memoir ?

2011-06-19T22:56:00.000-06:00

Here's a little question tonight for some thought and input:

Suppose you want to write a memoir based on true, exciting events from your past life ... but, due to lapsed time, you have to fictionalize some of the 'in-betweens' to link the true events together.

How do you characterize the story?

"A fictionalized memoir based on true events."

"A memoir"

"A creative nonfiction memoir (or narrative nonfiction memoir)."

Actually, I wonder if most published memoirs don't in fact have a lot of made-up fragments to complete the story?

Any input will be a great learning experience for many, including yours truly, and greatly appreciated...

Are Some Editors Too F**king Uppity?

2011-06-16T23:38:00.001-06:00

From Publishing/Writing: Insights, News, Intrigue Blog:

Note the slash & Burn Editor image at left.

It seems some editors have admitted to canning a complete manuscript sent to them because they found a “technical” (grammatical) error on the first page!…Damn! Christ, in his second coming, wouldn’t stand a chance of surviving another crucifixion with these excessively puckered wordsmiths.

I feel that correcting these type of technical, grammatical errors is actually part of the goddamned editors job. Hell, editors that judge the whole manuscript content based on an incorrect word structure or phrasing mistake (of which, by the way, all the past, great authors were guilty) are simply lousy at their perceived function in life.

Having said that…here is an editors view by Ann Patty in Publishing Perspectives that cocked my trigger and with which I respectfully disagree in part:

Learn the F**king Rules!

Dumb errors in books and e-books are becoming more commonplace — but do overstretched publishers give a damn?

I was delighted to see the New York Times article last week about Johnny Temple’s success with Go the F*ck to Sleep. In this era of groupthink at the large publishers, it’s cause for celebration when a small house such as Akashic Books not only succeeds with a bold bet, but even manages to hang on to the property when the corporate sharks circle. Alas, my delight turned to consternation when I read the verse quoted in the article.

“The cats nestle close to their kittens,

The lambs have laid down with the sheep.

You’re cozy and warm in your bed, my dear.

Please go the f**k to sleep.”

Even my Word program, as I typed the above, knows that the second line should read “The lambs have lain down with the sheep.” Such a mistake, with a word whose meter and rhyme is incidental in the line, in poetry!

In my many years as an editor, the most frequent lesson I’ve had to impart to writers — from fledglings to award winners to mega-bestsellers — is about the difference between the transitive verb lay, laid, laid and the intransitive verb lie, lay, lain. Some authors get it; some never do, even after eight or nine books. That’s why there are editors and copy editors and proofreaders, right?

Where was the editor on Go the F*ck to Sleep? Where was the copy editor, the proofreader? How did that laid slip by them? Isn’t it their job to protect the writer from such an embarrassing mistake?

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How To Contract the New Opportunities for Print Buyers

2011-06-11T22:02:00.000-06:00

A little RE what should be included in publishers' contracts in todays world of multi-platform publishing.

You see, as I always suspected and posted in previous posts, the growing popularity of digital publishing would produce a tail long enough to also pull print publishing into a new more streamlined, cost-effective era that would synergize its popularity with that of digital...

You can get print fast and cheap today...If you know what to include in the print bid contract.

Interesting stuff!

Details by Bert N. Langford in FOLIO magazine:

Multi-Platform Publishing Offers New Opportunities for “Print” Buyers

If you have not bid out your work to the printing marketplace in the past three or more years, you are likely missing out on a great opportunity, not only in your print deal, but also the growing synergies between digital and print that printers now offer.

Within the following I’ll offer some tips (but not all, due to limited space) on how to conduct printing negotiations in a manner that maximizes your company’s benefits and opportunities.

Your first step is to form an aggressive yet adaptable strategy for how to conduct negotiations and track the comparative results. In all cases, create the comparative

printing analysis based on the same issue makeup found on your printer’s invoice (and reported by the same fiscal month) for the most recently completed fiscal year.

Then below the line, adjust the basic pricing results to consider all costs of doing business with each printer that can occur over the contract term.

This includes each printer’s ROI-proven digital/print Value-Added Program (VAP) of interest to your company. Consider each as another “adjustment” category (as the printer’s pricing is offset by savings/income). But contractually require that your company retains ownership of the data and can move to another printer later, without losing the program’s benefits.

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Editors - More Needed than Ever!

2011-06-06T22:47:00.000-06:00

Editors are mysterious creatures...And mostly underappreciated. Whats been happening in their world with all the new instant tech publishing apparatus?

Yes, indeed ... with all the instant pub bullshit ... has the 'working-behind-the-scenes' wonder-makers (and often kingmakers of authors) been left out in the cold?

Not if the new and up-and-coming authors are smart!

This view from the Sydney Morning Herald:

The future of publishing will be a tale of two books

Anybody who's been following the constant stream of bitching and moaning on my Twitter and Facebook feeds of late will know I have been editing and rewriting a manuscript. The third, and probably final book, in the Disappearance trilogy.

It's been kind of hell, and yet it's necessary. It's always necessary.

The people I feel sorry for are my editors, who get dragged arse backwards through the rusty barbed wire of the first and second drafts. You very rarely hear about editors in publishing. They're mysterious creatures, working in secret, shying away from bright lights and loud noises. Publishers hide them away, too. All the better to create an air of mystery and power around their authors. To encourage the idea that we are just so hell damn brilliant we get up in the morning and start farting out perfect copy.

We don't.

If we're lucky we have editors who smash and carve and tweak our raw output into something readable. I've been lucky to have some very good editors over the years, especially Jon Gibbs and Joel Naoum, who've been working on my latest book. As an example of how important an editor can be to the final shape of a book, I spent three hours on the phone with Jon the other day, nutting out a timeline issue. It started with just one stray thread that he pulled, quickly leading to the unravelling of the entire manuscript.

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Publishing Acquisitions Faulty Strategy: ‘I Love You, Now Change.’

2011-05-31T22:22:00.001-06:00

“What makes a small publisher’s books interesting is usually the first thing that disappears when being acquired by a larger company.”
Why is that? Instead of expounding the acquired publishers’ unique successes, the acquiring firm often wants to immediately make it over in its own image…an image which is often suffering and in need of the spark that attracted the acquiring firm in the first place!

More insight by Edward Nawotka of Publishing Perspectives :

Why Do So Many Publishers Say “I Love You, Now Change”?

“I love you, now change,” is something we’ve all heard before in relationships. It’s likely that instead of actually being in love with the person as they are, you’re in love with the person as you imagine them to be. The desire to shape them into the perfect creature is not unreasonable. Illusion is, frankly, a part of love.

The same goes with publishers. In the micro sense, they often covet a writer (and poach them) or, in the macro sense, they covet a publishing house and merge them. Publishers are by nature in love with the possibility of something, instead of something as it is. Sometimes they can genuinely improve on a writer’s work and career, but just as many times they can radically alter an author’s career path for worse. The same goes when publishing houses merge and absorb a smaller firm. Often, what makes that smaller firm’s books interesting in-and-of themselves — perhaps it’s branding, perhaps it’s an eclectic list — is the first thing that disappears into the larger entity. Does it have to be this way? Of course not. But as with today’s feature story about the rumors swirling around the merger between Aufbau Verlag and Eichborn Verlag in Germany, things can get sour fast.

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Authors' Approach to the Publishing Craft - Do New Authors Take it Seriously?

2011-05-27T07:13:00.000-06:00

Not today. Not in this new era of empowered publishing. Everyone is running to just get their “baby” published and get their name out there in web-land.

And, of course, their are the usual carnival barkers just trying to sell something through print.

The serious self-publishers today (and they are in the minority) do strive to learn all they can about the publishing craft…INCLUDING traditional publishing standards and guidelines RE editing, copyediting, layout, design, etc…

More details at Publishing Perspectives.com by Justine Tal Goldberg :

200 Million Americans Want to Publish Books, But Can They?

Some 200 Million Americans say they want to publish a book, but lack of attendance at the IBPA’s Publishing University at BEA suggests a disregard for the craft of book publishing.

It’s often said the book fairs are no place for writers. But what about at a conference organized specifically to help writers publish?

According to writer Joseph Epstein, “81 percent of Americans feel that they have a book in them — and should write it.” That’s approximately 200 million people who aspire to authorship. Excluding those who want and never do, and those who do but never publish, we’re still looking at millions of folks hungry for the literary limelight. In light of recent trends in publishing — the fact that self-published titles have dwarfed traditionally published works nearly 2:1 — one would expect that the Independent Book Publishers Association’s 27th annual Publishing University, a concurrent event with BookExpo America at New York City’s Javits Center this week, would have been swarming with author-publishers on the prowl for a much-needed literary education. Strangely, it wasn’t.

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Digital Growth Surpasses Print Decline

2011-05-21T22:45:00.000-06:00

Digital revenue growth has overcome print advertising revenue declines for the first time at Future Publishing, home to 'Total Film' and 'Classic Rock'.

Could this smashing news at Future Publishing be a forecaster for the future of all publishing?

This from Mark Sweney of Guardian.co.uk :

Future reaches digital 'tipping point'
Stevie Spring (pictured), Future Publishing Chief Executive, speaks of 'big story' as digital growth outstrips print decline for first time

Future Publishing chief executive Stevie Spring has claimed the magazine company reached a "tipping point" after digital revenues growth outstripped its print advertising income decline.

Future Publishing, home to Total Film and Classic Rock, reported its first growth in UK ad revenues in four years on Friday, up 2% to £13.3m in the six months to the end of March this year.

The publisher said it marked the first time online advertising revenues had outpaced the decline in print income. Its digital operation also made a profit for the first time, with online revenue up 30% to £7.9m.

"This is the tipping point for us," said Spring. "Seriously, to be able to stand up and say when print revenues – especially advertising – are in further decline [that] online grew faster ... that is to us a very big story."

Newspapers and magazines have struggled to address the downward spiral of traditionally high-priced print advertising revenue with internet revenues – a financial problem referred to as "analogue pounds versus digital pennies".

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Solving Every Publishers Paywall Problem

2011-05-15T08:23:00.000-06:00

This post deals with monetizing publishers' online content and a super simple paywall system that allows this to happen quickly with ease!

From my Publishing/Writing: Insights, News, Intrigue Blog:

How about a super simple program that allows you to set up a flexible content monetizer (paywall) that allows readers to pay for one article for an hour or access archieves for a week or gain access to the entire site for a month or year!

That super simple program is Tiny Pass (A real Mighty Mouse!)

“For example, the Huffington Post could use Tiny Pass to make users pay $.05 to be able to read an article by Arianna Huffington for an hour or $.25 to read her entire archives for a week. Or it could charge $5 to gain access to the entire site for one month.”

More details at the Business Insider by Noah Davis:

This Startup Just Solved Every Publication’s Paywall Problem — And It Is Using The Huffington Post As Proof

Suppose you are a web publisher who wants to institute a pay wall. You could spend millions on developing one like The New York Times.Or you could call Tiny Pass.

The latest project from Hudson Media Ventures is a micropayment platform that allows publishers to indicate the content they want to charge users for, how much they want to charge, and how long the access will last. It then delivers said content after users simply and quickly pay for the privilege.

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Copyright Clearance Center: Lack of Rights Management Systems in the U.S. Publishing Industry

2011-05-11T08:42:00.000-06:00

I've been running around like a chicken with it's head cut off! Time is again short this morning...but, I felt I had to get this out today.

This intriguing info from Charlotte Abbott writing in Publishing Perspectives:

Publishing’s Paper Problem and How to Future-Proof the Industry

There’s an urgent need for publishers to update legacy rights management and content creation systems, according to speakers at BISG’s (Book Industry Study Group) “Making Information Pay” conference.

Though the idea of publishing as a data-driven industry may still be anathema to its old guard, the Book Industry Study Group’s 8th annual Making Information Pay conference hammered home once again that gathering and managing the right data is critical to “future-proofing” the industry. The key is using data to improve content and product development, book discovery and rights management, as well as customer loyalty and profitable growth, said Book Industry Study Group chair Scott Lubeck in his introduction to the ten presentations packed into last Thursday morning’s meeting at the McGraw-Hill auditorium in New York.

Rights Management Systems Are Out-of-Date

The big jaw-dropper was BISG’s joint survey with the Copyright Clearance Center on the fundamental lack of rights management systems throughout the industry in the U.S. — described as “a vast problem.” The conference, which tends to focus on improving supply chain, operational and technical infrastructure, also went further than in the past in outlining how the adoption of new data-driven mechanisms will affect marketing and even editorial functions within publishers.

The crux of the industry’s rights management problem, as articulated by Heather Reid of the Copyright Clearance Center, is that while digital publishing in the new global marketplace offers new licensing opportunities not just for books, but also for fragments of books, publishers are not equipped to respond promptly to rights requests. The nine publishers and six vendors in the survey said the problem is rooted legacy rights management systems created in the 1960s. Largely made up of paper records and in some cases PDFs of legal contracts, these old systems fall far short of the well-structured data storage necessary for fast access and to build the automated processes needed to exploit new markets.

The paper problem is endemic, said Reid. One vendor reported that 50% of the publishers it deals with, including big ones, have rights contracts filed in paper. Publishers themselves said that their inbound rights records were inaccessible and outbound rights transactions take so long to process that rights querents often give up and move on to other content providers. The sole publisher in the survey who had transitioned to a structured rights data system reported “a 100% increase in licensing revenue when we started responding faster to rights requests,” according to Reid. However, this publisher also admitted that moving to the new data system was “arduous.” To turn the industry around, Reid called for standardized terms to optimize business processes, and the alignment of rights management systems within and between publishers and vendors. To that end, BISG is crafting a taxonomy it hopes will become the foundation of data modeling for the next generation of industry rights tools.

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Book Buyers Shifting from Culture of “Ownership” to Culture of “Access”

2011-05-08T22:49:00.000-06:00

The future of the printed book is looking more dire than ever. The increases in the percentages RE digital book sales have surpassed all expectations...this has fostered a shift in consumers culture of book ownership to book content access.

What the hell, access to digital IS ALSO ownership, though, is it not? You have to pay for that access; and you can always convert it to print (for those who still desire).

Me thinks people make far too much brouhaha over written content formats...

I have posted often before that I feel the printed book will never go away completely...and it won't...It just will not be the only kid on the block anymore AND it will wear a different suit of cloths (a different business model for getting into print and distributed).

These interesting details on The Future of Books provided by L. K. Sharma in the Business Standard:

As the great new digital wave dawns upon them, publishers ponder over the challenges and opportunities.

The London Book Fair last year was held under the shadow of the volcanic ash. This time it was gripped by existential fears about the future of the printed book and of the fair’s venue, Earls Court exhibition centre, which faces demolition and development. The dire forecasts of the death of the printed book and the physical book shop were dismissed by some experts who tried to calm the fears sparked by two ‘e’ words — ‘e-publishing’ and ‘e-retailing’. The developing e-environment in publishing has excited the device and platform developers and the digital natives. This in turn made the publishers talk of new “challenges and opportunities”.

A related issue that is more likely to be discussed by an NGO rather than at an industry fair is whether the people could let their digital future be controlled by powerful corporations. Ordinary book readers also have stakes on how the digital publishers’ dispute with public libraries will be resolved. In the US, library e-book downloads have been shooting up and some digital publishers are refusing to sell to libraries.

The tipping point
The future of the printed book and of independent booksellers has been a topic of seminars for some years but this time experts at the fair agreed that the tipping point has been reached. E-books have arrived. One-third of publishers say they would get more than 10 per cent of revenue from e-books next year. As a result of the advances in digital and communication technologies and the appearance of new platforms and devices, e-books already account for 10 per cent of the book sales in the US. That country now boasts of 40 million e-readers and many of them come in the category of core readers — those who buy more than 12 books a year. Some e-books had a 50 per cent share of total sales during the first few months of publication. Thus a US publishing executive did not hesitate to call it “a watershed moment for the trade”. A British executive referred to the decline of physical book retailing. In Britain, e-books account for 5 per cent of book sales but the latest research shows that it will also see exponential growth in the number of people buying e-books. What the US does today, some countries are bound to do tomorrow.

Some turmoil in the book business has also been caused by the growing stronghold of the mega retail chains and the overall decline in the book sales because of the current economic situation. Individual booksellers have been hit hard. The trend of the closure of distinctive small bookshops has accelerated so much that many towns in Britain will be left without any bookshop. It is not that the mega chains can rest on their laurels. With heavy book buyers preferring to buy digitally, even their brick-and-mortar outlets are under siege. Borders of America could not survive in the UK. Ottakar’s, James Thin and Dillon chain have disappeared from the British high street, though Waterstone’s is still in business, holding on to some 30 per cent of the book market.

Naturally, the thought of future haunted the book fair participants. Companies tried to buy and sell future. Many participants were keen to attend workshops and seminars on FutureBook! The Digital Pavilion attracted larger audiences than the Russian book market on which the fair had focused this time. The optimists tried to boost the morale by talking up the market but it was hard not to notice the undercurrent of anxiety.

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Don't Feel Sorry for Lagardere Publishing (U.S. subsidiary, Hachette Book Group)

2011-05-04T08:44:00.000-06:00

Lagardere Publishing's earnings fell to 390 million euros in the first quarter! Damn, how in the hell will they ever get by?

They apparently lost about 10% over this time last year due to a particular popular book series (Twilight) that came to the end of a good run.

Well, Lagardere, go get another good series to publish! I would suggest to you that there are plenty of great content just waiting to be picked up floating around out there in the new digital atmosphere...It has never been more accessible!

This from Publishers Weekly (Financial Reporting Division):

Sales at Lagardere Publishing fell approximately 10% in the first quarter to 390 million euros. The company attributed the decline to tough comparisons to last year’s first quarter in which the Twilight Saga titles were still experiencing strong sales, particularly in the U.S. Somewhat offsetting the decline of Twilight in Lagardere’s U.S. subsidiary, Hachette Book Group, was an 88% rise in e-book sales and e-book sales accounted for 22% of revenue at HBG in the quarter. E-book sales are expected to remain strong for the year, although growth will slow slightly and account for 15% to 20% of revenue at HBG for the full year.

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So Which Is It...Custom Publishing or Content Marketing?

2011-04-30T18:49:00.000-06:00

The subject of this post is really a trick question...Simply because custom publishing and content marketing can be the same thing.

'Says Joe Pulizzi, founder of content marketing specialists Junta42: “We decided to go with ‘content marketing’ because brands didn’t get it—they automatically thought book publishing or print. The idea is that marketers need to be publishers today. When you talk to a brand, they get it right away.”'

The golden nugget in all things publishing has, is and always will be "King Content"...I've drilled this fact into many posts and other presentations. Success will be predicated on how we can mold, massage and present content...for whatever purpose.

FOLIO magazine presents these details by Matt Kinsman and Tony Silber:

The Content Marketing Revolution
How is content marketing a different business for publishers?

Each year the publishing world seems to become enamored with a new strategy that will redefine the industry. In 2011, that’s marketing services. Last month, Penton Media bought Washington, DC-based EyeTraffic Media, an online marketing firm, and in April is expected to announce a company-wide shift toward marketing services.

“If you look at Outsell, they say 60 percent of a marketer’s internal spend is going to their Web site and that it’s the biggest pain point,” says Penton senior vice president of marketing services Kim Paulsen. “We want to help companies do a much better job of utilizing their Web sites with great content and understanding social media. Companies all say they need a Facebook page or a Twitter feed, but they’re not sure what to do with it.”

Under the umbrella of marketing services comes “content marketing,” which really isn’t much different from custom publishing, it just sounds sexier (and more dotcom-friendly). “If you look at branded and custom content, it’s all the same,” says Joe Pulizzi, founder of content marketing specialists Junta42. “We decided to go with ‘content marketing’ because brands didn’t get it—they automatically thought book publishing or print. The idea is that marketers need to be publishers today. When you talk to a brand, they get it right away.”

Three big factors are driving the content marketing boom—brands’ focus on social media, search engine optimization and lead generation. “You need unique content for any of those three to work well,” says Pulizzi.

WATT Publishing is seeing dollars go to three particular areas online: ROI Integrated Marketing Programs (“After three long years of evangelizing measuring programs, we’re seeing traction,” says director of e-strategy and marketing Jeff Miller); virtual events; and custom programs/content creative that includes social networking and video. “We are providing a variety of new services including ‘ghost blogging’ and producing content intended to boost SEO,” says Miller.

A New Business Model

But while publishers may have offered successful custom publishing services in the past, content marketing as a business can be radically different from traditional publishing, from the client relationship to pricing and sales cycles.

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The Next Generation of Kindle Begins...Powered By You!

2011-04-24T21:48:00.001-06:00

How would you like to directly publish your works to the Amazon Kindle Store whenever the mood strikes? Eliminate any middleman immediately...

Pretty cool, right?

Well Amazon is introducing a 'Direct Publishing' model that will allow authors and publishers to independently publish their books in the Amazon.de Kindle Store that will be available in Germany, Austria, the U.K., U.S. and over 100 countries!

Damn, they're making publishing awfully easy! Now if they would only make the marketing just as easy...

Wonder how they will funnel the scripts into proper formats? That would be interesting to understand. I guess the only way to find out is to go ahead and direct publish something on Kindle using the new model, huh?

Anyway, these details are by Ray Willington from HotHardWare.com :

Amazon.de Allows Self-Publishing To Kindle E-Book Store

There's been quite a heavy flow of Kindle-related news this week, hitting just as rumors started flying that the company behind it may be interested in doing their own tablet, too. Amazon has just introduced a new Direct Publishing model that will allow authors and publishers to independently publish their books in the Amazon.de Kindle Store. What's odd is that this is starting in Germany, but maybe the company's using that nation as a launching pad, and maybe even a test bed.

The split is easy to remember: authors will earn 70% royalty on sales to Kindle customers in Germany and Austria, which mirrors the 70/30 split largely pioneered in Apple's App Store. Authors who choose this will have a huge audience; the Kindle e-book store can be accessed not only on the Kindle itself, but also on a ton of other devices and computers. German-language authors and publishers can utilize the new German KDP website to make their books available in Germany, Austria, the U.K., U.S. and over 100 countries worldwide. The popular KDP 70% royalty option, which allows authors and publishers worldwide to make more money on books sold to Kindle customers in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, is now also available for books sold in Germany and Austria. Additionally, publishers can now receive their payment in either Euros, British pounds or U.S. dollars.

The Amazon.de Kindle Store serves customers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, but we have no doubt that it'll hit other nations shortly. And so, the next generation of Kindle begins -- powered by you.

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Converting Content Into 'Paid' Content (Oh, Brother!)

2011-04-21T21:20:00.000-06:00

Paid content is actually growing in popularity...I could hardly believe it!

But, how do you monetize good content? There are several models for paid content that are being experimented with...and successfully at that...

This from FOLIO magazine's Executive Editor, Matt Kinsman:

Building a Business on Content Sales
Publishers explore different pricing models, products

The appeal of paid content is growing. Last month, The New York Times embarked on one of the largest tests yet around paid content, introducing a subscription plan for the heaviest users of its site. The plan offers three digital subscription options across a variety of devices. All Digital Access-Web site, tablet, smartphone-costs $35 per month.

Meanwhile, printer R.R. Donnelley acquired Journalism Online and its Press+ service, which enables publishers to offer a variety of paid and metered content plans as well as mobile/tablet access, enhanced site functionality, and out-of-market-access.

However, paid content is far from a slam-dunk. The Atlantic has backed away from the launch of The Atlantic Premium, which would have offered a daily bundle of its online content for a monthly fee. "We're taking a step back on our entire mobile/digital strategy and revisiting everything right now," says president Justin Smith. "We're looking at the data from our apps so far and it begs the strategic question of whether we would consider any kind of metered model on the Web site. We're not ready to make that decision at this point. Our current high-CPM, ad-supported model is working."

The New York Times recently announced a 26-week deep discount to try to get readers behind the new paywall (The Times says that more than 100,000 users are paying so far).

Manageable Solutions

Smaller publishers are getting onboard as well. U.K.-based luxury title Lusso Magazine has introduced micropayment options for online premium content at its Web site that offer access to full-length features across up to five different devices. The payments will be processed through PayPal. While purchases are only made on the Web site (which receives about 40,000 unique visitors per month), a user can re-enter a supplied voucher code to read it on another device.
While b-to-b publishing historically has been built around the premise of free content, it also has the best chance for converting to a paid model.

And not everything requires paywalls or metered programs. Last fall, UBM Electronics' EE Times launched EE Times Confidential, a premium, subscription-based intelligence report. The report is a downloadable PDF that is currently published monthly and will increase to twice per month later in 2011 (a Web site offering current issues and archives will also be launched).

"When ad money is dwindling and whatever we do is defined by how much money we can bring in, [editors] are in a difficult situation to justify our existence," says EE Times content chief Junko Yoshida. "We've grown up in a world where the information is given away for free. We decided we wanted to change the game."

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The Worth of Global Publishing

2011-04-17T19:38:00.000-06:00

Did you realize that global publishing's estimated worth is right at €80 Billion? (€ is the Euro money symbol...I forgot that, if I ever knew it!).

AND that global publishing is the second largest creative industry after television? It is currently bigger than music publishing, video games, entertainment software and audiovisual (DVDs and downloads) industries combined!

Arriving at the absolute true value of world publishing presents some roadblocks; for example, this "one crucial reason: the near-total absence of statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab world, which together account for a fifth of the world’s population."

Ruediger Wischenbart, a leading world publishing and book consultant from Germany, is seeking to undertake an unprecedented project -– the compilation of a comprehensive database of global publishing statistics.

A very worthy but daunting cause, indeed...

Publishing Perspectives has interesting details and numbers furnished by Tolu Ogunlesi:

Q: What is Global Publishing Worth? A: €80 Billion

Publishing — including STM, Educational and Trade material -– is currently estimated at being worth €80 billion and is the second largest creative industry in the world, after television; and is currently bigger than the music publishing; video games and entertainment software; and audiovisuals (DVDs and downloads) industries combined. But the question of what global publishing is really worth is not likely to be a true reflection, for one crucial reason: the near-total absence of statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab world, which together account for a fifth of the world’s population.

“It’s a struggle to find the most basic statistics in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Rudiger Wischenbart, a book industry consultant, told the audience at a panel discussion exploring that question, during the 2011 London Book Fair. “There’s only one country with good statistics –- South Africa.”

Wischenbart is seeking to undertake an unprecedented project -– the compilation of a comprehensive database of global publishing statistics. He explained that the findings are still “preliminary” at this stage.

A presentation by panelist Nasser Jarrous, Managing Director of Lebanese publishing house Jarrous Press, and a former chairman of the Beirut International Book Fair, provided insight into the politics of publishing industry statistics in North Africa and the Middle East.

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Publishing Nuggets--Insights for You

2011-04-14T23:46:00.000-06:00

Insightful publishing news bouncing around the web today...from mag advertising revenues increasing, tech advances in tablet apps, new custom Publishing Options for the Higher Education Community to Google's earnings falling short!

A regular treasure trove of incisive publishing and publishing-related learning material.

I present some of what I consider the most interesting:

IAB Reports 2010 Internet Ad Revenues Up Almost 15 Percent

2010 fourth quarter revenue increases 19 Percent over 2009 Q4.

I wanted to introduce the IAB (the Interactive Advertising Bureau) to you all in this one.

Grading the Tina Brown Newsweek

Packaging, graphics are much improved, but can she walk the “Newsbeast” line?

Sports Illustrated Launches App for Motorola Xoom

App is part of Time Inc.’s “All Access” digital subscription plan.

Could Google’s earnings feed doubt across the tech world?

Google’s earnings fell short of what analysts were expecting Thursday, sending shares in the tech giant sinking to a six-month low in after-hours trading.

Read and learn more at the Publishing/Writing: Insights, News, Intrigue Blog

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What's With this 'YouTube Next'?

2011-04-13T08:28:00.000-06:00

For those that might not know, Google bought YouTube back around 2006. Now they have purchased Next New Networks (NNN), a NYC-based startup in the online video production industry.

Many thought Google/YouTube purchased NNN to get into the content creation business…This is not the case. They just want the expertise, by way of NNN’s staff, to provide deeper and more professional content on YouTube (rather than skateboarding cats, etc). And they are going to do this by offering training in video production and audience development through a new program called YouTube Next.

This will benefit publishers tremendously! And by publishers I mean more specifically people who want to sell self-published books.

More details on my other blog: Publishing/Writing: Insights, News, Intrigue

DOTGO and the Text-Messaging Publishing Suite--Interesting Stuff!

2011-04-10T07:21:00.000-06:00

This is a suite that utilizes CMRL (Concise Message Routing Language) to allow people to text websites…And, everybody knows (I didn’t, of course!)… that text messaging is the world’s most powerful and direct marketing medium.

Having said this, and realizing I’m in unexplored territory in my knowledge base, I will introduce you to the expert in this field: DOTGO, a powerful mobile publishing platform, in this press release yanked from Bradenton.com (nice weather in Bradenton, FL., by the way):

DOTGO Launches Text Messaging Publishing Suite for All 100 Million Internet Domains

CMRL-Based Suite Makes Person-to-Website Text Messaging Available to All

Text-messaging technology leader DOTGO today announced the launch of its much-anticipated web-based publishing suite, allowing all 100 million Internet domains to take advantage of text messaging, the world’s most powerful and direct marketing medium.

The new web-based interface, called DOTGO Publisher, is built on top of DOTGO’s mobile markup language CMRL, the Concise Message Routing Language. With its release of the new tool, DOTGO has leveled the playing field for those seeking to use text messaging to promote their brands–from individuals and small businesses to leading media companies.

Prior to DOTGO, running a text messaging service was very expensive, time-consuming, and relied on software that was either technically complex or limiting. DOTGO eliminates these obstacles, bringing text messaging to all 100 million Internet domains, by introducing two unique ideas. First, DOTGO maps the first word of any text message sent to the phone number DOTCOM (368266) to the corresponding .com Internet domain name. For example, anyone with a cell phone can access a site like google.com by texting the word “google” to the phone number DOTCOM (368266). This means all 100 million Internet domain names now have a way for their users to text them. Users of .edu, .gov, .net, and .org domains can similarly use the phone numbers DOTEDU (368338), DOTGOV (368468), DOTNET (368638), and DOTORG (368674).

Second, DOTGO has developed the first and only markup language for text messaging, called CMRL, the Concise Message Routing Language. CMRL does for text messaging what HTML does for the web: it allows web developers to author the text messaging responses for their Internet domain names. The introduction of DOTGO Publisher brings the power of CMRL and DOTGO to all non-developers, and features a site builder for authoring CMRL, a message center for broadcasting messages, and analytics for showing detailed text messaging statistics for an Internet domain name.

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The Economics of Content Marketing and Custom Publishing

2011-04-07T22:56:00.000-06:00

The new growth business in the online publishing industry is a new strategy (perhaps just a revamped strategy) called 'marketing services'

New marketing services businesses, such as Outsell (and soon Penton Media), offer an array of flexible services to help publishers and commercial information providers identify and grow markets and revenue.

Custom marketing means something totally different in modern publishing than it did in traditional publishing (TP) and that's why TP people still don't get the importance of the newer business model concepts that can grow online money with lower margins than existed under the old TP models.

I just love reading about and understanding (when possible) the inside numbers and strategies that make a business (especially the publishing biz) go (or fail). I admit, upfront, that I'm no expert in this territory; but Matt Kinsman, managing editor of FOLIO magazine, has a lot of answers with this post in FOLIO:

The Content Marketing Revolution
Content marketing is hot but how does it compare as a business?

Each year the publishing world seems to become enamored with a new strategy that will redefine the industry. In 2011, that's marketing services. Last month, Penton Media bought Washington, DC-based EyeTraffic Media, an online marketing firm, and in April is expected to announce a company-wide shift toward marketing services.

"If you look at Outsell, they say 60 percent of a marketer's internal spend is going to their Web site and that it's the biggest pain point," says Penton senior vice president of marketing services Kim Paulsen. "We want to help companies do a much better job of utilizing their Web sites with great content and understanding social media. Companies all say they need a Facebook page or a Twitter feed, but they're not sure what to do with it."

Under the umbrella of marketing services comes "content marketing," which really isn't much different from custom publishing, it just sounds sexier (and more dotcom-friendly). "If you look at branded and custom content, it's all the same," says Joe Pulizzi, founder of content marketing specialists Junta42. "We decided to go with ‘content marketing' because brands didn't get 'custom publishing'---they automatically thought book publishing or print. The idea is that marketers need to be publishers today. When you talk to a brand now, they get it right away."

While print still dominates the custom market ($24 billion was spent on print production and distribution in 2010, compared to $3.6 billion spent on other forms of content according to a new report from the Custom Content Council and ContentWise), three big factors are driving the content marketing boom today--social media, search engine optimization and lead generation. "You need unique content for any of those three to work well," says Pulizzi.

Read and learn more