During the final session of panels Tuesday, Don Linn assembled an eclectic mix of independent booksellers, digital publishers and entrepreneurs to delve into some of the new business models that may change publishing, once they are more well established. Because each presenter told their tales separately, so too will this report be separated out by individual: Chris Morrow of Northshire Books: “I’m here to remind you that physical bookstores still exist, and most of you still sell books through physical bookstores.” He went on to discuss why POD at the retail level is important (case in point: the store has […]
Archives for January 2010
Rice's Book Announced for October
Condoleezza Rice’s book Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family has been set for an October 12 release by Crown, accompanied by ebook and audio versions, along with a young adult version from Delacorte. Rice says, “After I left Washington, it seemed important to write about how my very special parents, my extended family, and so many mentors shaped me for the challenges that lay ahead. I decided that was the story I wanted to tell first.” Separately, St. Martin’s has moved up the release date of Andrew Young’s tell-all about former boss John Edwards, THE POLITICIAN, to January 30.
Verso Presents Consumer Survey; Asks Why Indie Market Share Is So Much Lower than Mindshare
Following some of the earlier research findings from Verso Digital’s new consumer analytics business that we ran in Lunch prior to Digital Book World, Jack McKeown presented additional findings (and some suggestion conclusions and strategic inferences). Many of the slides were data-heavy–always hard to capture at a conference, but they are viewable now online. On the subject of piracy–addressed earlier in the day by Brian Napack–McKeown underscored their conclusion that approximately 80 percent of the population downloaded few or no titles illegally in the past year (just six percent of respondents were frequent downloaders). One interesting slide showed respondents favorite […]
DBW: Back-Loaded Book Deals and Other Business Models
This afternoon’s panel discussion sounded an optimistic note (one attendee called it “the most hopeful panel he’d heard in the last 2 years”) for publishing’s ability to be nimble on non-traditional book deal models, and moderator Lorraine Shanley took her panelists – HarperStudio’s Bob Miller, Mary Ann Naples of Creative Culture, Ira Silverberg of Sterling Lord Literistic and Vanguard’s Roger Cooper — through a series of questions addressing profit-sharing, increased author marketing, and how to make publisher, author, and agent happy with so many possible models in play – or potentially in the works. Caveat: these notes were more or […]
Napack at DBW: Piracy Stems from Pre-Pub Copies
Macmillan president Brian Napack addressed Digital Book World this morning on the “the cheery, happy pleasant topic of people stealing your stuff.” He noted, “Piracy is happening. The question is how bad is it in the trade publishing business?” Napack said that “anyone who says that piracy isn’t an issue doesn’t understand,” showing a list of numerous NYT bestsellers, all available on some torrent site for free. Among Macmillan’s own examples, a search of Vuze (“a slick little thing if you want something for free” that searches all the torrent sites) showed 29 places to get pirated Sherrilyn Kenyon books, […]
From Digital Book World, A New Social Metric to Worry About; Poetry Site Helps Sales
Razorfish executive and author Shiv Singh kicked off the presentations to a full room at the inaugural Digital Book World conference in New York this morning. It’s always interesting for people in the relatively inward-focused book publishing business to hear from outside experts, and yet usually, unless those experts bring some particular understanding of publishing or work hard to modify their pitch to publishers’ complex needs, the advice tends to fall flat. There’s no arguing with Singh’s basic thesis–that consumers now have all the control, and communicating brands to them isn’t as simple as it used be. But many of […]