By Helen Gregg On Thursday in New York City, a panel of three independent booksellers told a room full of marketers and publicists that free pizza will get teens to read (and buy) a book, that promotional posters and bookmarks are mostly just clutter, and why they aren’t selling e-books in their stores. The event, called [...]
By Edward Nawotka The PEN World Voices Festival in New York continues through Monday. If you can’t make it to New York, you can still watch events live as they happen all weekend: take a look at what’s on offer and for links to stream the events here.
By Olivia Snaije The third Palestine Festival of Literature begins May 1st and will run until May 6th, with international writers and artists traveling to the West Bank. This young festival was created by Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif, British authors and journalists Victoria Brittain and Brigid Keenan, among others, in 2008 with the mission to bring writers [...]
By Edward Nawotka It’s getting lots of buzz, but transmedia storytelling is expensive, requires people with skills (animation, computer programming) that publishers don’t traditionally have on staff, and requires one to work more like a theater troupe than a corporation. Can traditional publishers make the jump into this new, potentially profitable medium? Read our lead story and [...]
Editorial by Ian Harper “It stands above others to demonstrate the potential of a true ‘electronic book’ — as opposed to the digital ‘picture’ of a printed book that you’d download to your e-reader, Inanimate Alice is a wonderful place to glimpse the future of electronic texts….” John Warren, Marketing Director, Publications, RAND Corporation We are entering [...]
By Edward Nawotka There was a time when “book trailers” were, by and large, ad hoc and amateurish. Today, they are often slick little professional piece of film making. Whether or not they have any real impact on book sales is anyone’s guess, but it’s worth noting that they have become an art form in and [...]
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead article describes how Connotate’s search technology could be used to create “live” e-books. What kinds of content would you like to see incorporated into such an e-book? How do you envision it working? Read the article and let us know what you think in the comments below.
By Edward Nawotka Enhanced e-books with web and video links embedded in the text is just the beginning: “One of the things we can do is to enable the creation of unique new data sets using the Internet as a source,” says Bruce Molloy, CEO of Connotate. “Real time analysis and use of this new data [...]
By Siobhan O’Leary Foreign language dictionary publisher Langenscheidt is testing out the social media waters by offering a new free Facebook language course application. Those who sign up for the Englisch in 5 Minuten app will receive new lessons every two days which can be downloaded as PDFs and also include an audio component. The [...]
By Dennis Abrams Spring is here, summer will fast be upon us, and for most readers, it’s the time for fat juicy mindless paperback novels, perfect for idling away the time while at the beach or on vacation. This year though, why not try something different? There’s still time to join us on our year long journey through [...]
