By Amanda DeMarco Gunnar Siewert doesn’t come from a publishing background. He worked at Bertelsmann Music Group from 1992 to 2002, a watershed era of “democratization and digitalization” for the music industry that profoundly affected the founding of his Web 2.0 publishing platform, BookRix. Siewert sees BookRix as a MySpace for literature where writers and readers [...]
By Olivia Snaije Edouard Cointreau’s Gourmand World Cookbook Awards have been a fixture on the Frankfurt Book Fair scene since 1995, when the Awards were launched to draw attention to those who “cook with words.” Fifteen years later Gourmand is the network par excellence for “foodie” professionals. Boosted by the fact that cookbook publishing is one of [...]
By Mike Springer If Shannon Fitzgerald had to choose one word to describe what today’s young people expect from media content, it would be: Authenticity. “They are so smart and so savvy,” says Fitzgerald, the new Vice President of Series Development at MTV. “They sniff out BS really quickly now.” In her view, young people feel empowered [...]
By Edward Nawotka Eric Frank, co-founder of Flat World Knowledge, describes the bizarre evolution of the contemporary textbook into “Frankentext,” — what he calls a “overstuffed, overpriced, and unloved” monster. To Frank, the current academic publishing scene is a horror story. Of course, Frank is not alone in looking across the book publishing landscape and seeing monsters. For [...]
• The textbook, the revered embodiment of knowledge for more than 150 years, had turned into Frankentext, The Monster: overstuffed, overpriced, and unloved. • Eric Frank, co-founder of Flat World Knowledge, explains why and what might be done to thwart the monster. Editorial by Eric Frank, co-founder, Flat World Knowledge (with a little help from Mary Shelley [...]
By Nick Ruffilo, CIO/CTO BookSwim.com I’ve seen quite a bit of discussion around metadata and its power, but numbers that confirm its usefulness are rarely announced. Six months ago, BookSwim.com rebuilt its search and recommendation engine. The results from the upgrades were mind-boggling. BookSwim is an online subscription book rental club. Members can rent unlimited titles from [...]
By Hannah Johnson Yesterday, a coalition of entertainment companies, including MovieLabs, CableLabs, Comcast and Rovi Corporation, announced the launch of the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR). The EIDR is meant to serve as a global cataloging system for movies, television and other media content by providing a unique ID and metadata for each piece of content. The press [...]
By Matías Fernández (translated from the Spanish by Emily Williams) Gabriela Adamo worked for a number of years as a literary editor for the celebrated imprint Sudamericana, now part of Random House Mondadori. When she left her editing post, she started off the new millennium working with TYPA, a non-profit institution that specializes in connecting Argentinian [...]
• Sharjah’s International Book Fair, October 26 to November 6, emphasizes collaboration with western publishers. • Several new awards were bestowed at this year’s Fair to highlight excellence in English-language publishing. By Roger Tagholm SHARJAH, UAE: It was a good day for Chicago at the Sharjah International Book Fair’s inaugural international awards, presented by His Highness Sheik Dr. [...]
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story covers the ongoing Sharjah International Book Fair. This year, the Fair introduced three new book awards for English language works (discussed in the piece). In addition, the Egypt-based Dar El Shorouk won the second edition of the Etisalat Prize for Arabic Children’s Literature with the book, Al Noqta Al Sawda [...]
