Ready for Publishing Camp NYC?
Beyond the sessions, the best part of any conference is being able to spend time talking to smart people from a variety of backgrounds, and both WDC11 and DBW11 are sponsoring fun gatherings to accommodate that.
Amazon vs. Google: Seth Godin Wins
In the old days, that platform was the physical bookshelf in a brick-and-mortar retailer. Today, it's a combination of email and ecommerce.
Don’t Be a Writer, Be a Creator
And by independence, I mean making a sustainable living, not just self-publishing your book via Amazon or Lulu or Smashwords and declaring yourself an "indie".
Goodreads Takes Next Step in Social Reading
Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, according to the latest Nielsen research, and the most conservative estimates predict eBooks will represent at least 10% of book sales by the end of the year, but one question that’s not been clearly answered yet is whether there’s any demand to bring the two together.
Goodreads, the largest social network specifically for readers, claims a dual mission: “to get people excited about reading,” and, via their Goodreads Author program, “to help authors reach their target audience — passionate readers.”
The site boasts 3.6 million members who have added more than 100 million books to their virtual shelves and created more than 30,000 groups covering a variety of interests.
Five Highlights from SXSW Interactive
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,…
Everything You Thought You Knew is Wrong
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.
Do Publishers Still Need Authors?
Just as many entrepreneurs no longer need venture capitalists to launch their companies, authors no longer need publishers to publish.
Mark Coker, Do Authors Still Need Publishers?
Picture this: In the future, as the risks of publishing shift from the publisher to the author, publishers will be able to invest in technologies that allow them to bypass authors completely, developing sophisticated algorithms to scrape their content from the Internet, repurpose and repackage it for non-discriminating readers, and charge advertisers fistfuls of money for their wandering eyeballs!
It sounds even better if you say it out loud in Dr. Evil’s voice. Or Chris Anderson’s. Or Arianna Huffington’s.
Resistance is futile!
If Coker’s second linkbait advertorial for the Huffington Post didn’t add anything new to the conversation, it did at least spawn a new hashtag on Twitter, #publishersmatter, and generate some interesting discussion around the value publishers do, and don’t, offer authors nowadays.
My take?