A major difference between book publishing today and book publishing 25 years ago is the practical power of the author brand in marketing. Multi-book authors can not only build their own followings in ways that can be usefully exploited, they now have an unprecedented capability to help each other. Of course, they can do that […]
Another wake-up call from Amazon as they serve author interests better than publishers have
The Authors Guild and its allies have recently appealed to the Department of Justice to investigate Amazon’s possible monopoly control of the book business. It is hard to quarrel with the fact that Amazon delivers more of the publishing output to consumers than any single account ever has and that they are, inevitably, changing the […]
Headliners galore will address Digital Book World 2015
Half of Digital Book World is delivered to the entire audience from the Main Stage. The speakers for 2015 comprise the most illustrious group we have ever had. The headine is definitely that we have managed to corral both Amazon and Apple speakers for our main stage — a feat we don’t believe any other […]
The Digital Book World program this year covers the waterfront of the digital transition for book publishing
(This is a longer-than-usual Shatzkin Files post reviewing the topics and speakers for the 26 breakout sessions at DBW 2015. It serves as a checklist of “things to think about right now” for book publishers living through the experience of digital change. The entire program is here. We decided not to link to each and every […]
Capturing and distributing video might be getting cheaper than capturing and distributing words
There has always been a hierarchy of media built around how easy or cheap it was to deliver one versus another. The most simplistic expression of this has always been that words are cheap and moving images are expensive. A writer could create the intellectual core of a book on her own with paper and […]