Hot Eye Pop: Surveying the Good and Bad in Book Trailers

In English Language, Resources by Kathleen Sweeney

The best — and most innovative — book trailers can attract thousands or even millions of viewers. We talk to several experts about what works and why. By Kathleen Sweeney When the term “book trailer” first buzzed out of Los Angeles in 2002, expectations ran high for video promos to become mandatory launch elements. Nine years later, multimedia roll-outs remain ad hoc …

From Pages Read to Minutes Spent: Rethinking How We Quantify Reading

In Guest Contributors by Guest Contributor

By Todd Sattersten Amazon launched Kindle Singles last week. These original works of 10,000 to 30,000 words are designed to fill the space between an essay and book. At the same time, TED, the popular conference organization, launched TED Books as a publishing imprint using the Singles program. Director Chris Anderson stated what he sees as the problem: “Busy people …

Amazon Kindle Launches Singles with TED E-books

In What's the Buzz by Hannah Johnson

By Hannah Johnson Yesterday, Amazon began selling its Kindle Singles online. Singles are e-books between 5,000 and 30,000 words long. According to the press release, these e-books are meant to “allow a single killer idea — well researched, well argued and well illustrated — to be expressed at its natural length.” Singles are priced between $0.99 and $4.99 (though at …

Mister Splashypants Goes to Washington

In Erin's Perspective by Erin L. Cox

By Erin L. Cox Okay, this story has nothing to do with Mister Splashypants directly, but it brings up a lot of questions that arose in an earlier post I wrote about Alexis Ohanian’s speech at TED about Greenpeace’s “Name the Whale” campaign and how, once you let things out online, it is near-impossible to try to control them…and sometimes that’s okay.  …

Can Publishers Learn a Lesson from Mister Splashy Pants?

In What's the Buzz by Erin L. Cox

By Erin L. Cox Today, the folks at TED: Technology Entertainment Design, arguably the largest tech conference in the world, posted videos on their website of talks from last month’s TEDIndia event, including a presentation by the social media site Reddit.com’s co-founder, Alexis Ohanian, entitled “How to Make a Splash in Social Media.”   Coincidentally, today’s lead story, “Why Smart Publishers Care About Tech Conferences” about …