Realities change. Ever since Amazon arrived in the “book business” 20 years ago, each year the “book business” has become less and less of a stand-alone industry. Of course, the only part that ever really was a stand-alone was the trade business, where the entire ecosystem: authors and their agents, publishers, booksellers, and even — […]
Starter thoughts for publishers to develop new author marketing policies
In a prior post, we suggested that the time has come for publishers to have clear policies around what they should require from author web presences for an effective publishing partnership. This is a really complex and multi-faceted challenge for every publisher. The purpose of this post is to discuss that proposition in more detail, […]
No author website rules of the road in publishing contracts is a big fail for the industry
The topic of author websites and what the relationship between publishers and authors around them should be is a big “fail” for the publishing industry at the moment. Nobody seems to have thought this through. Publisher policies are all over the lot, even within houses, and that demonstrates that agents haven’t figured out what policies and […]
Better book marketing in the future depends a bit on unlearning the best practices of the past
[Note to subscribers. We have switched from Feedburner to Mail Chimp for email distribution to our list to improve our service. Please send us a note if you have any problems or think there’s anything we ought to know.] ************************************************************************* A few years ago, publishers invented the position of Chief Digital Officer and many of […]
What smaller publishers, agents, and authors need to know about ebook publishing
As the shift from a print-centric book world to a digital one accelerates, more and more digital publishers are creating themselves. The biggest publishers, with the resources of sophisticated IT departments to guide them, have been in the game for years now and paying serious attention since the Kindle was launched by Amazon late in […]