There is a question that every agent and publisher is dealing with, because authors surely are. And that’s this: when should an author self- (or indie-) publish? The answer is certainly not “never”, and if there is anybody left in a publishing house who thinks it is, they should think a little harder. For a […]
No, Mike Shatzkin did NOT say that publishing is spiraling down the drain
As part of the promotion of the Digital Book World conference, I do some interviewing with the very capable Jeremy Greenfield, the editor of their blog. And Jeremy takes our conversations and chops them up into short pieces around the themes of our show. Since the focus of Digital Book World is “how digital is […]
Which flies the coop first? the chicken or the egg?
There are lessons that can be taught or learned in one segment of publishing that can then apply to another. Well over a decade ago, Mark Bide and I were discussing the business model for journals. The way it works is that the university pays the professors a salary and rewards them with promotions and […]
A debate across panels is coming at our London show on June 21
It looks like we’re going to have a bit of an unintended debate stretching across several of our panels at the Publishers Launch show in London. Since I’m the guy who put the show together, I can speak with authority to the fact that it was really unintended. But I consider it serendipitous and proof […]
Returns may be going, but some book sales will go along with them
Sometimes expressing your opinion can have unintended consequences. In a post last week, I observed that the explosive growth of ebooks made it likely, in my opinion (shared by others, some of whom are in high places), that as many as half the book purchases could be online purchases by the end of 2012. I see […]