For a writer, it's an amazing opportunity to leverage the full depth of their creations through a truly collaborative process -- ideally starting after the first draft is written, IMO -- instead of parceling out chunks of rights for a licensing fee and complete loss of control.
Six months ago, Digital Book World didn't exist. And yet, 48 hours ago I had the honor of giving the closing remarks at the end of our first annual Digital Book World Conference. Simultaneously exhilarated and exhausted, I communicated most of what I'd hoped to say, but I wanted to reiterate and expand upon it here (and share my slides) because it was a message not just for those in attendance, but for everyone working in this industry that I'm so passionate and optimistic about.
The best blogs are driven by passion, not obligation, and that you can tell when someone is just feeding the machine to maintain their traffic, a la Seth Godin, for whom I often use the hashtag #bloggingtoohard.
Today is the last day of the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, TX, but it wrapped up for me last night, and while I'm still digesting everything I took in, a few highlights have already become clear. Overall, the festival has been a chaotic mix of truly inspired presentations, thinly veiled sales pitches, over-the-top demagoguery and/or self-promotion, filtered through an incredibly diverse range of creative disciplines and strategic philosophies. The program was an eclectic buffet that wasn't always easy to navigate with the Austin Convention Center's awkward layout that makes it difficult to go between the 3rd to 4th floors,…
This will be my first year attending, and while a few presentations immediately jumped out at me as must-sees (eg: You Are Not a Gadget author Jaron Lanier), I decided to ask other people in publishing why they are going and what/who they are most looking forward to seeing.
You’re losing control of your own destiny. Authors, distributors and readers are getting closer to each other.
–Shiv Singh, Engaging Readers in the Digital Age
Three weeks ago, when I last posted something here, I was on the verge of completely disappearing into Digital Book World, both the conference and the community that spun out of it, the latter now representing my day [and night, and some weekends] job.
So I’ve been pretty busy.
Thankfully, it’s been a good busy, and the next couple of months are going to be very exciting.
Digital Book World
The conference was a huge success by pretty much any measure — I had the extreme honor of giving the closing remarks, “The Future of Publishing is Bright” — and the community platform is quickly coming together, starting with a series of free WEBcasts; in-person seminars (Digitize Your Career); and more to be announced.
Whether you agree with Macmillan's push for new terms of sale for their ebooks or not, one thing that's been particularly impressive is the extremely vocal support they've received from their authors, particularly those published by their sci-fi/fantasy imprint Tor/Forge. As the news broke last weekend, several Tor/Forge authors immediately reacted to Amazon's ceasing direct sales of their books by replacing Amazon's links on their sites and redirecting their fans to Barnes & Noble and IndieBound. Among them was Cherie Priest, whose popular steampunk novel, Boneshaker, was recently honored with a PNBA 2010 Book Award, and as of 12:45pm EST…