Group items tagged

Amazon said it will begin offering authors and publishers a bigger cut of book sales on its Kindle e-reader-but with strings attached aimed at keeping prices that consumers pay down." />

Excellent read from  book designer "I want to look at where printed books stand in respect to digital publishing, why we historically haven't read long-form text on screens and how the iPad is wedging itself in the middle of everything. In doing so I think we can find the line in the sand to define when content should be printed or digitized. This is a conversation for books-makers, web-heads, content-creators, authors and designers. For people who love beautifully made things. And for the storytellers who are willing to take risks and want to consider the most appropriate shape and media for their yarns."

Risks of self-publishing.  Authors working independently, without an editor willing to challenge, may be working against their best intrests.

Critics of Wikipedia are pushing it to expand beyond the traditional Western model of scholarship and authority: the written word

Self-published authors and publishing houses are learning to work together.

"The Web means that publishing anywhere means publishing everywhere, thus subjecting authors and publishers to litigation in pro-plaintiff jurisdictions"

Perhaps the most revealing thing about the "Dumb Money" story, in fact, is that everyone involved -- author, agent and publisher -- saw it as an experiment, the kind of small-scale trial run that a late-adopting industry needs to do a lot more of.

HarperStudio's new way of doing business with authors and promoting their works.

Authors Guild and others request more time in the Google book-scanning case.

Google and two author and publisher groups submitted a modified version of a controversial settlement over digital books, but it appears likely the fight over the agreement will continue." />

Heat mapping to better direct your marketing efforts based on geography? Yes, please!

Really, really great interview series with authors, publishers and writers about their ideas for the future of reading. Includes Clay Shirky, Maria Popova & Clive Thompson. Also nice to see a blog like this on tumblr.

Watch the video entitled "Discover how to use the pen when reading books". One of the features is that you can have an author autograph your e-book!

A blender that makes smoothies based on fruits trending on Twitter. I think things like this could help publishers think outside the box.Similar to authors who write chapter by chapter and then based on reader comments, continue and develop the story. Digital influence in realtime.

Stephen Marche rebels against digital formats (sort of) by creating an interior layout that can't possibly be read on a device...not sure I agree... but it's an interesting look at an author seeing books as art.  That I can agree with.

Crowdfunded ebook operation that is just releasing it's first "unglued" edition, that is, not proprietary to any device and free to all who want to download it.  What's cool about Unglue.it is that they're attempting to raise money for specific publishing projects to compensate authors, and get their work out to anyone who can download it.  It's early and success is not guaranteed, but it's a cool idea!

Amazon started life as a book retailer, and as a book retailer they made books cheaper. Then they were pioneers in the e-book industry where they made books cheaper. Their recently announced plan to give readers free e-book copies of books they buy in physical form doesn't make books cheaper per se, but it does give readers greater value for their book-buying dollar. This is all great stuff. But not everyone agrees. Emily Gould complains that "When ebooks and pbooks are bundled, the ebooks are sold at a loss. That's authors', publishers' and, associatively, non-AMZN retailers' loss" and "frustrating we have to keep explaining that ebook production is not free. digital objects are not made by elves."

The above article briefly talks about eBooks and the need for eBook conversion. Then it goes on to discuss some essential tips for authors and publishers before outsourcing eBook conversion requirements to a service provider.