Media

Commentary on various aspects of publishing and marketing, primarily focused on books, magazines, and social media.

Read more about the article Reflections on, Takeaways from #eBookSummit

Reflections on, Takeaways from #eBookSummit

mediabistro.com eBook Summit in New York by Mediabistro
mediabistro.com eBook Summit in New York by Mediabistro

“I suppose we could sum up this entire two-day conference under the headline ‘too early to tell.'”

–Steve Wasserman (Kneerim & Williams)

I attended MediaBistro’s eBook Summit this week and Wasserman’s summation is perfect; consumer book publishing is smack in the middle of the digital transition, and solid answers about how it will all play out are hard to come by. That doesn’t mean, of course, that there aren’t plenty of people willing to throw their two cents (and millions of VC dollars) into the conversation.

While ostensibly a competitive event with Digital Book World, my sense was that both the program and attendees were very different from ours — the former more theoretical and broader; the latter… well, just different, I’d say. There’s clearly room for both events, which I was actually glad to see, because I’m a fan of MediaBistro and I don’t want the wonderful Carmen Scheidel getting mad at me after we just became friends!

I live-tweeted both days of the Summit — Day 1 and Day 2 (sorry LiveJournal friends!) — and after cleansing my palette by reading more of the latest issue of Monocle (an absolutely beautiful example of what can and should be done only in print), here’s my top five takeaways:

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Read more about the article 5 Things Books Should Learn From Magazines

5 Things Books Should Learn From Magazines

Like my favorite writers, the magazines I truly value introduce me to new things, or show me new angles on the familiar, that I'd not have come across on my own. In my own series of posts for Folio: a few months back, I made the point that content + context = value, declaring that magazines that nail the equation will survive. That same math is also valid in the conversation about the future of books.

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Read more about the article eBooks: The False Dilemma

eBooks: The False Dilemma

People will continue to read printed books for a long time, just as some people still watch movies on VHS. But the printed book will be "dead" in a few short years in the sense that the bulk of the adoption curve, the pragmatic majority, will have moved on. --Arvind Narayanan, "The death of the printed book is closer than you think" Narayanan's post is the latest addition to the tiresome "print is dead" meme, and like the vast majority of digital evangelists, he presents a false dilemma, posits a zero-sum scenario, and evokes the tired and largely irrelevant example…

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Read more about the article Everything You Thought You Knew is Wrong

Everything You Thought You Knew is Wrong

Earth time. by A National Acrobat
Earth time. by A National Acrobat

And this is what surprises me. Harlequin, you’re brilliant. You’ve made nothing but all the right steps in all these decades of publishing. You flourish where others founder. You took a great (welcome) leap with Carina, but this? This displays the business sense of a kindergartner.

–Moriah Jovan, Harlequin: Ur doin it rong

How fast is the publishing industry changing?

Two weeks ago, I praised Harlequin for their new digital-only imprint, Carina Press, noting that its business model, while not “new” by any stretch, was a great leap into the future for a traditional publisher to make, especially a well-established leader in its niche. Commentary about the new initiative was mostly positive all around, and purely measured on buzz, its announcement was a PR success.

Last week, they got a noticeably different response to another new initiative, the launch of a self-publishing program under the banner Harlequin Horizons, in partnership with Author Solutions, Inc.. The backlash was fast and furious  from both the Romance Writers Association and several outspoken members of the romance community, including Jackie Keesler, whose “Harlequin Horizons versus RWA” post is a must-read.

By almost any definition, last week was a PR disaster for Harlequin, but for authors, it was just the latest sign that everything you thought you knew about publishing  is wrong.

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Read more about the article What’s the Curation Algorithm, Kenneth?

What’s the Curation Algorithm, Kenneth?

A disturbance in the Matrix - Tokyo, Japan by jamesjustin
A disturbance in the Matrix - Tokyo, Japan by jamesjustin

I was recently talking with a couple of researchers who observed that the most interesting science isn’t usually in the big name journals, but rather in the mid-tier or even lower-tier publications where really radical thinking and unusual results find their way into the literature. The big name journals are publishing on popular topics well along in the scientific literature. They’re important, but less interesting.

Curating out of the middle is a major opportunity for publishers and others in the information landscape. Repetition, presentation, prominence, and context all provide curatorial power.

—Kent Anderson, The Scholarly Kitchen

The concept of curation is a hot-button topic in publishing these days, often conjuring visions of the literary boogeyman: a faceless, soulless gatekeeper whose only job is to keep the riff-raff out of the Ivory Tower and off the bestseller lists.

It’s a frustrating meme, one of the pundit class’ many ill-conceived spins on the Kobayashi Maru, typically posited without any intention of offering a dramatic test of character.

My definition of curator is not at all like the anti-progress archivist Mike Cane prefers, but closer to that of a community organizer, a la Richard Nash’s vision of social publishing or Dan Holloway’s “Why not one of us?” call to arms.

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Read more about the article Six People in My (Virtual) Neighborhood

Six People in My (Virtual) Neighborhood

Bottled Liquor Newsstand by Bill on Capitol Hill
Bottled Liquor Newsstand by Bill on Capitol Hill

This fervid desire for the Web bespeaks a longing so intense that it can only be understood as spiritual. A longing indicates that something is missing in our lives. What is missing is the sound of the human voice.

David Weinberger, The Cluetrain Manifesto

A year ago, I used to get most of my information from a variety of traditional and new media sources primarily via Google Reader. Now, loathe as I am to admit it, Twitter has replaced it as my primary aggregator, and the mix of sources is very different, too.

This past weekend, I did a major purge of my RSS feeds in Reader, clearing out more than 2/3rds of them (now down to 61 feeds), including some that were duplicates of Twitter feeds I follow, and many others I realized weren’t terribly essential when a hectic day found me hitting “Mark all as read” on 1,000+ items. But while Twitter is good for taking the pulse of the moment and flashes of conversation (or debate), I still look to blogs for more thoughtful insight and, increasingly, a sense of community.

I’ve noted before that Twitter is a great professional networking tool, more cocktail party than office, and the people I follow there are primarily in publishing and marketing, but there’s a specific subset of which I’ve become particularly fond: writers with great blogs.

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