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The Misinformation Age: What Happens When A Headline Goes Viral
In our new world of social media, a world of speed and as-it's-happening immediacy, personal interconnectedness and global reach, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc., are tools of tremendous power, especially in the marketing of books and discovery of authors. Those tools also pose problems.
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B&N Meets BEA—Sort of: In Abu Dhabi, book fairs are for selling
Four graduate students from the Center for Publishing at New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies volunteered at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair two weeks ago, thanks to generous support from literary agent Jane Dystel, who oversees the Oscar Dystel Research Fellowship Fund (set up by her father, the former chairman and president of Bantam Books).
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Editor To Child: Want To Help?: Balancing Work And Motherhood Was Never So Fulfilling
My cellphone is pressed to my ear and my shoulder is hunched to support it. That same shoulder is also bearing at least 15 pounds, or 400 double-spaced manuscript pages. My right hand holds that of my seven-year-old son. I have gone straight from my office to his school to take him to the doctor—he's had a nagging cough that has kept us both up these past few nights.
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We're For You, Not Against You: A Librarian's Take On E-book Lending
On February 28, the library e-book vendor Overdrive announced that one publisher's e-books would expire from library collections after 26 circulations, and the publisher in question was challenging longstanding library resource sharing and group purchasing practices. Within hours, the publisher was identified as HarperCollins.
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The Happy Reader Equation: A Librarian on HarperCollins's E-Book Pricing Model
HarperCollins generated a lot of controversy and debate with its new pricing model for e-books capping usage. In this week’s issue of PW, Connecticut librarian Kate Sheehan weighs in on the issue, and in PW Daily today we offer another piece by NYPL’s Christopher Platt, who takes a slighter different tack.
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Filter or Be Flooded: Publisher As Curator
I come from a family of book people. My mother was a writer, my father a printer, my uncle an author. As a child, I got used to the sound of an IBM electric typewriter clickity-clacking away long into the night. Back then, publishers were the gatekeepers.
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Waiting for a Fair E-book Split - David to Goliath: Keep the Advance
Since last August I've been in negotiations for a book deal with the editor-in-chief of a major publishing house. But I had to abruptly end all further discussions about the project just as we were nearing an agreement.
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Adventures In Author Events: Tales from the Sacramento Bee Book Club
Michael Chabon had just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay when he spoke in front of the Sacramento Bee Book Club. The crowd of 700 (mostly women) seemed somewhat tense when the strikingly handsome writer strolled across the stage to the microphone—maybe they were a bit intimidated.
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Lessons From Third Grade: The Cure For Writer's Block
"Excuse me, Mr. Michael. Excuse me." A tiny third grader with short, curly brown hair and a mouthful of braces, Anna B. waved her hand with the force of an outboard motor. Before calling on her, I looked around the room to see if any of my less talkative students had their hands up.
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Hit 'Print': How One Bookstore Uses Its Espresso Book Machine
When Sarah Jensen and her sister were young girls, their favorite book was Ethel Parton's Penelope Ellen, in which a child is delighted to receive, as a Christmas present, a copy of the 1840 edition of Peter Parley's Annual, the popular 19th-century children's periodical. Last December, Sarah's eyes glistened with emotion as we printed a copy of that Annual on Harvard Book Store's Espresso Book Machine.
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Promote This! Forget Facebook
Books are hard to sell, publishers are terrified, authors are dismayed. Hear the whoosh of the e-drain sucking us all in, all the way to Google's huge vat of brain dust! Oh, my bottom line, it hurts! Marketing's been running the show for so long, we've even forgotten what should hurt. It's your head that should hurt; not your bottom.
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Five Degrees Of Metadata: Small Changes Can Mean Big Sales
Metadata has been a buzz topic in the publishing industry lately, and as a metadata evangelist, I think this is great. In practice, however, the pleas of people like me often fall on deaf ears.
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Trouble on the Raft: Defending an 'Other' Huck Finn
The idea of preparing an alternative edition of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn occurred to me last year during a lecture tour designed by librarians to remind younger readers that engrossing literature predated the Harry Potter series.
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My E-Reading Strategy: Late Adopters Don't Always Finish Last
Some of us late adopters take a stand rather than lag behind. Until recently I took a stand against reading a book on a digital device, remaining steadfast and true to my favorite independent bookstore, Laguna Beach Books.
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When Reviewer Becomes Reviewee: On Experiencing Mild Schizophrenia
The lot of a book reviewer isn't all roses. For one thing, you frequently have to commit to reading a lengthy, involved book—then, despite the investment of many precious hours, perhaps be willing to say that you despise the thing. I am a former reviewer and, for more than 15 years, an editor of others' reviews—one who saddled both myself and colleagues with this bookish burden.
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Citizen Author: Determined, Motivated, Fed-Up Authors: Unite
America was founded by a scrappy bunch of determined, motivated, fed-up citizen soldiers who revolted against an unjust system that benefited the few at the expense of the many. Like them, a new 21st-century group of brave outsiders has decided to revolt against the often unfair elitism of modern publishing. We call them Citizen Authors.
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2010 (The App)
Our annual end-of-year poem by Richard Curtis.
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The Hand-Sell
After a writing career of 40-plus years that has included 20 novels and stints as a newspaper reporter and Associated Press news desk editor, I've tried just about every trick in the game to increase my book sales. But I'm still learning new ones.
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The Snooki Of the U.K.: Preparing My Book for U.S. Publication
I have an English friend who's always having her books published in the U.S. Myself a Brit, I tried to sound casual when I said that my own book, Fame: What the Classics Tell Us About the Cult of Celebrity, was to appear in America.
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'Maximum Horror': On Violence in Novels
I often find myself reading novels that are well written and psychologically astute, but devolve into violence that is out of scale, graphically described where it need not be, or both.
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