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 […]
Agents who come to Digital Book World will learn a lot they can immediately apply
The mission of the Digital Book World conference is industry education around digital change. There is a plethora of programming for this year’s event that will serve that purpose particularly well for literary agents. Of all the people in the industry, it would seem to me that agents would get the fastest and surest “return […]
When an author should self-publish and how that might change
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 […]
Nine places to look in 2014 to predict the future of publishing
The digital transition of the trade book publishing business, which I would date from the opening of Amazon.com in 1995, enters its 20th year in 2014. Here are some of the ponderables as we close out the first two decades of a process of very rapid change that is far from over. 1. What’s going […]
Seven-and-a-half days of conference programming coming up during 4 days in January
Blog posts have been scarcer for the past couple of months because I’ve been so engaged with a major responsibility: putting together what amounts to 7-1/2 days of conference programming that will be presented on four days next month in New York City. As most readers of this blog probably know, we’re responsible for the […]