AN ONLINE PUBLISHER ARGUES FOR ITS CONTINUED RELEVANCE
In the digital media landscape, independent publishers are akin to magazines; they both cater to specific demographic groups and provide authoritative content that engages like-minded individuals. Interest-based publishing has flourished for decades, spanning across publishing and broadcast platforms, connecting with discrete audiences… [read more]
Source: Tech Crunch
WANT TO SUCCEED IN SELF-PUBLISHING? LEARN TO HAVE FUN
Indie author Mary Frame self-published the first book in her Imperfect series last spring. Imperfect Chemistry earned a glowing review from Publishers Weekly, with our reviewer saying “the blend of humor and heart makes for a thoughtful, highly entertaining read” and that “perfectly imperfect characters and situations make Frame’s debut novel sparkle… [read more]
Source: Publishers Weekly
BUILDING AWAY FROM THE BOOK
If publishers and readers are to get the most out of digital content, we in the industry need to think harder about embracing “modularity”—the process I outlined in my last post for creating value from flexible “chunks” of content. Many books today, whether print or digital, are produced in a linear process from authoring to production—which reflects… [read more]
Source: Digital Book World
HOW HAS PUBLISHING CHANGED IN THE DIGITAL AGE FOR BOOK AUTHORS?
I’ve published more than 20 books; more than half of these were either novels or short story collections. I have never left behind the necessary feeling that each new book will be the best and that each new book feels as though it were the first. Even so, I have never felt as confused and at the same full of expectation as I have with my latest, the novel Prayers for the Living… [read more]
Source: Slate
5 TIPS FOR ONLNE BOOK MARKETING TODAY
“As a developer, you get involved with everything,” says Derrick Schultz, Director of Developer Experience at the digital publisher Atavist. Previously, he served as a developer with Open Air Publishing — which was one of the first publishers to license the Inkling platform — and then at the short-lived Atavist Books. Each experience has given him some… [read more]
Source: Publishing Perspectives
HOW TO BUILD RICH NAVIGATION IN EPUB3
EPUB3 is no longer all that new, but there still seems to be some reluctance among digital publishers to make the final move to a full-fledged EPUB3 workflow. In just the last two months I’ve been asked several times about the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of making the switch. And I’ve offered my opinion, unasked, about doing so an equal number of times… [read more]
Source: Digital Book World
RAKUTEN BUYS OVERDRIVE
The Japan-based parent company of ebook retailer Kobo announces it will acquire OverDrive in a $410 million cash deal with Insight Venture Partners, OverDrive’s majority shareholder since 2010. A leading distributor of digital content in the library market, OverDrive “will take advantage of the global reach, scale and technologies… [read more]
Source: Digital Book World
WHAT WE GOT WRONG ABOUT BOOKS
It is one of the cruel truisms of the book business that publishers rarely have much insight into how their products are actually used. This is not for lack of curiosity on a publisher’s part but because of the structure of the industry: books are almost never sold directly to end-users. They are sold to libraries and the wholesalers that service libraries… [read more]
Source: The Scholarly Kitchen
BARNES & NOBLE TOUTS PROMISE OF RETAIL-DIGITAL COMBINATION
When the spin-off of its college division is completed later this year, Barnes & Noble plans to sell both print and digital books, B&N Inc. CEO Mike Huseby told analysts during a conference call last week to discuss third-quarter results. Huseby said B&N remains committed to supporting Nook products and that executives believe Nook’s best chance for success… [read more]
Source: Publisher’s Weekly
NEW PLATFORM SENSERIAL DELIVERS SERIALIZED E-BOOKS
One of the more popular ways that readers are consuming digital content involves the auto-delivery of content such as serialized titles, installment short stories, auto-delivery of digital newspapers and magazines. Whether it’s a throwback to the days of authors like Poe, Dickens, and Twain, all three of whom often wrote and published in installments… [read more]
Source: Good E-Reader
PUBLISHERS GETTING LEFT BEHIND ON MOBILE
Did you feel it? Did you feel the change? If you’re in the publishing world there’s a chance you didn’t. One reason for that could be you’ve been existing on the industry’s shifting sands for a while now. Maybe you’ve grown so used to change that it doesn’t even phase you anymore. But I don’t think that’s it… [read more]
Source: Digital Book World
AMAZON LAUNCHES ‘WRITE ON’ CROWD-PUBLISHING PLATFORM
Amazon has a new crowd-publishing platform called Write On, which is a direct competitor to Wattpad, the social network with self-publishing authors offering up their content for free, and working together with the community to incorporate feedback into their ongoing work. The Amazon version launched last October as an invite-only beta… [read more]
Source: Tech Crunch
RESEARCHING READER INTENT
There is one aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) that doesn’t get nearly as much play in the publishing business as it does elsewhere: understanding searchers’ intentions and aligning marketing content with their queries, usually by crafting landing pages. In this post, I’ll look at how book publishers and authors can better reach readers through… [read more]
Source: Digital Book World
PUBLISHIZER IS A CROWDFUNDING SOLUTION THAT CONNECTS AUTHORS WITH PUBLISHERS
As a seasoned self-published author with an excess of one book under my belt, I’ve been looking for new and interesting publishing tools for indie writers. Recently I found something called Publishizer, a crowdfunding system just for books. While I’m not entirely convinced it’s the way to go for new authors, it does seem like a compact and focused solution… [read more]
Source: Tech Crunch
AMAZON FRIEND OR FOE?
The first thoughts the question triggers for me are three ways I think Amazon has profoundly changed the industry. Although just about every publisher has headaches dealing with Amazon, very few could deny that Amazon is their most profitable account, if they take sales volume, returns, and the cost of servicing into consideration… [read more]
Source: The Idea Logical Company
THE TROUBLE WITH INDIE MATH
The self-publishing platform Lulu.com recently published this infographic drawing on data from the latest report based on the Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest Author Survey as well as from the Author Earnings project… [read more]
Source: Digital Book World
SELF-PUBLISHING MATTERS, DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU OTHERWISE
Unless you are a mountain hermit or a committed Luddite, you will have noticed there has been a massive growth in self-publishing activity over the last decade or so. Self-publishing has well and truly arrived, spawning not only thousands of book titles but also a number of online publishing platforms… [read more]
Source: Science Codex
