By Edward Nawotka In today’s lead story Nicholas Gary — one of the co-founders of the French literary website Actualitté — notes that in the digital age: “We’ll write about love, but differently. The themes will remain the same . . . A friend introduced me to a new application for the iPhone which is a Japanese garden. You can …
Publishers Training Abu Dhabi, Day 3: All About Digital
By Salwa Shakhshir SalwaShakhshir, a children’s book publisher from Amman, Jordan, is attending the second annual Publishers Training program organized by KITAB and The Center for Publishing at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies in Abu Dhabi. She’s documenting her experiences for Publishing Perspectives. Read coverage of Day 1 and Day 2. Day 3, Publishers Training, Abu …
Digital to Represent 20 to 28% of Publishing’s Profits, says Forum d’Avignon/Bain & Co. Report
By Edward Nawotka A new study, “Publishing in the Digital Era,” commissioned by the Forum d’Avignon and compiled by Bain & Co. states that e-readers, tablets other digital reading devices “could be in the hands of 15 to 20% of the developed world’s population by 2015,” and offers an unprecedented opportunity for publishers and authors. The “redistribution of value among …
The Future of Rights: Standards and Shared Metadata
By Emily Williams The paper book is an object of beauty and simplicity. This neat package has allowed books to conceal for many years the increasingly complex tangle of copyrights they each comprise: rights to text and images, limitations by territory and term of contract, restrictions on the reader. Then came the digital transition, books stripped off their paper packages, …
Web 2.0 Publishing with BookRix
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 interact without mediation. Talk …
Richard Nash on the Future of Publishing
By Michelle Jones Richard Nash’s new publishing venture, Cursor, has yet to release it’s first title, but its already caused a quite a stir. Much of what has been written about Nash of late has to do with his plans to overhaul the nature of author contracts. But shortening the contracts to three years and eliminating advances are just part …
Will E-books Make or Break Independent Publishers?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story is a profile of Jeffrey Lependorf, executive director of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. In the article, Lependorf notes that one of the priorities going forward is to help small and independent presses to traverse the tricky digital landscape. The CLMP is assisting them with issues such as digital conversion and distribution. …
The True Cost of Going Digital
By Daniel Kalder Digital publishing is transforming the book trade. But are publishers really prepared to grasp the challenges — not only technical but also financial — that transitioning to this brave new world involves? Dominique Raccah — founder, publisher and chief executive of Sourcebooks, one of the largest independent book publishers in the USA — thinks not. “It isn’t …
Will Ardor for E-books Diminish as They Become Commonplace?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story looks at Argentina’s e-book market. One of the arguments of the piece, is that e-books are seen as “sexy,” all the more so because of the relative scarcity of e-books and e-readers in the country. E-books are having their moment in the spotlight a look to be this year’s big holiday gift. But once …
In Argentina, E-books Are Sexy! (But You Can’t Find Them Anywhere)
• Publishers and readers across Argentina are talking about e-books — and their relative scarcity • Digital entrepreneurs are hard at work, but the market has a great deal of ground to make up before it catches America or Europe. By Julieta Lionetti BUENOS AIRES: Buenos Aires has a coffee-shop culture similar to that of Vienna or Paris, making it easy to stumble upon people …