By Karen Holt Where would you advertise if you had a bookstore to sell? Why not a booksellers convention? That’s what one independent bookstore store owner is doing. A woman — she says she was hired by the owner but isn’t authorized to reveal the name of the store of its owner — walked the convention floor Wednesday carrying a …
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E-book Sales Statistics from BISG Survey
By Karen Holt E-book sales grew exponentially in the first quarter of 2010, jumping from just 1.5% of total US book sales in 2009 to 5% of the market in the first quarter of 2010, said Kelly Gallagher, vice president of publishing services at R.R. Bowker, who presented the findings of Book Industry Study Group (BISG) research Wednesday during BookExpo …
Faith, Family, Fatherhood and Friendship with Author Bruce Feiler
By Karen Holt Arriving at BookExpo America Wednesday to promote his memoir, The Council of Dads, which he wrote after being diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of bone cancer, Feiler was smiling, energetic and eager to talk about not just his new book, but his plans for a future that until recently looked as if it would be …
BookSwim Plays “Telephone” at BEA
By Karen Holt If someone hands you a spiral-bound notebook during BEA and asks you to begin writing where they left off, consider it your chance to become a published author. If you’re already a published author, that’s okay, too. The notebooks are part of an innovative (and surprisingly spontaneous) marketing campaign by BookSwim, the company that bills itself as …
Digital Case Study: Can Goodreads Ads Help Unknown Authors Find an Audience?
By Karen Holt Goodreads.com, where authors use social networking to connect with fans and attract new readers, has quietly been building a program that lets writers and publishers pay to kickstart interest in their titles among the site’s 3.4 million book-loving members. Appearing under the label, “Sponsored Books,” the pay-per-click ads typically include a brief description of a title and …
By Turning Authors into Speakers, Publishers Profit, Even in Recession
By Karen Holt NEW YORK: US publishers’ in-house speakers bureaus, essentially nonexistent just five years ago, are turning out to be surprisingly recession-resilient — one of the few upbeat notes in this overall gloomy time for the book industry. Publishers are splitting appearance fees of between $5,000 and $20,000 (sometimes more) with their authors, representing a welcome source of found …
Web Police Attributor Courts US, German Publishers
By Karen Holt CALIFORNIA: Web tracking and analysis service Attributor is poised to make big inroads into the English and German speaking book markets, pitching its services to publishers on both sides of the Atlantic that are looking for a systematic way to crack down on online piracy. Attributor works by scanning billions of Web pages to find unauthorized use …