Online start-ups Byliner and The Atavist have established a market for stories too long for magazines and too short for books.
Is Non-linear Reading the Future of Nonfiction E-Reading?
Non-linear app “reading” is perhaps more analogous to how we really learn than reading a straight narrative. By Edward Nawotka In today’s feature story Kirk Bowe, CTO of UK app developer TradeMobile, explains how the company is attempting to create what amounts to a 3-D narrative on screens. In describing the company’s King and Queens app, developed from David Starkey’s …
Japanese Publishing Post-Earthquake: Inspiration and Survival Books Are Top Priority
By Edward Nawotka Friday, April 15, marked the five week anniversary of the 9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami that swamped north east Japan, destroying 30 bookstores, damaging several nuclear power plants, and forcing the rest of the country into rolling electrical blackouts. To mark the anniversary, Jim Bonner, director of UK e-book publisher Enhanced Editions, organized a “Read for Japan” …
Oneworld, One Household: A Husband and Wife and a Life in Publishing
How do you negotiate a publishing career and a marriage when they are one in the same? Editorial by Juliet Mabey LONDON: In 1986, my husband, Novin Doostdar, and I founded a publishing house called Oneworld Publications, with a focus on bold, intelligent non-fiction across the humanities. Now, 25 years later, despite the recent downturn in the global economy and …
Germany’s Non-fiction Book Market
This article originally appeared in Über:blick — German Book Industry Insight, a publication produced by the Frankfurt Book Fair. DOWNLOAD: the complete Über:blick issue (PDF). By Christine Proske Bestseller Lists Reflect the State of the Country In my opinion, the non-fiction bestseller lists are always a reflection of the sensitivities of a people. At the beginning of the 1990s, after …
What Germany is Reading This Week
By Hannah Johnson Gathered from Boersenblatt.net, here are the top ten fiction and nonfiction hardcover bestsellers in Germany this week. Top 10 Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers in Germany (Oct 28 – Nov 3) (From Boersenblatt.net) Ken Follett: Sturz der Titanen German Publisher: Bastei Luebbe (Translated from English) Original: Fall of Giants, published by Dutton Adult Elizabeth George: Wer dem Tode geweiht …
Are Graphic Novels Better Suited to Telling Non-fiction Stories than Prose?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story looks at the new graphic novel Cuba: My Revolution by Inverna Lockpez and Dean Haspiel (DC Comics/Vertigo). The story is based on the life of artist Inverna Lockpez, a Cuban dissident who was tortured and eventually escaped the island. The intensity of both the violence and emotion of the story is visceral, something he …
The Town that Pop Culture Forgot
Welcome to Utopia by Karen Valby (Spiegel & Grau, $25) Reviewed by Edward Nawotka In 2006, Entertainment Weekly writer Karen Valby uprooted herself from New York City to settle in the Hill Country town of Utopia, a place with a half-mile long Main Street featuring “zero stoplights, one constable, six real estate offices, and seven churches” and where just 540 …
German Booksellers Optimistic, Shun Self Help
By Siobhan O’Leary German book retailers are a lot more optimistic at the start of 2010 than they were a year ago. According to a survey conducted by buchreport, only 30% of booksellers are skeptical about their prospects for this year (compared to around 50% who anticipated a decline in business last year). However, publishers of non-fiction and particularly self-help …