At Business Week, Sarah Lacy writes about a topic “near and dear” to her: how publishing can adapt and “stay everywhere” in the wake of changing social media and Web 2.0 applications: “A way to do that is to ensure that publishing learns how to exploit the full benefits of the social media tools now taking hold of the Web. Newspapers dragged their heels and look what’s happening to them. As great as the Kindle is, publishing has a long way to go.” Her five lessons for the industry include looking to Yelp, Digg and Twitter for ways to “make […]
How Publishing Works
Dual Bonobo Cover Mystery Solved
For those who might have wondered why the covers of two recently published books by Francis Levy and Susan Squire featured the same photograph of amorous bonobos, the Observer has your answer. Turns out the photo, featured in a New Yorker article by Ian Parker, was taken by primatologist Frans de Waal – and when both Squire and Levy saw the photo, both asked permission to use it. “I received emails about this cover from both authors or publishers in the same week,” de Waal. “I am not a photo agency, but a busy scientist, so [I] don’t keep very […]
Publishing Terminology Primer
At the Chronicle of Higher Education, Rachel Toor prepares a “guide to the arcane terminology of the book world” after realizing she uses a lot of industry jargon, from “dingbat” to “stet” to “pre-empt”, when teaching her students about the ins and outs of publishing. She doesn’t mince words about the meaning of out-of print: “The end.”Chronicle of Higher Ed
ABA to Partner with Applewood on POD
I love the tidbit via Vermont Public Radio that, despite publishing world dreams that a POD book machine within a bookstore will make available countless titles efficiently to individual customers, what those customers really want is to make their own books. There is, potentially, huge opportunity there for physical bookstores, since the dozens of web sites that offer such services don’t have their own retail outlets. The bookstore is a natural place to go for help in publishing your own book (and if you buy the right package, they’ll put it on sale for you, too.) I’ve noted in speeches […]
Adam Bellow's "Conservative Chronicle"
Collins editor Adam Bellow’s essay in World Affairs Journal has drawn a number of comments from other quarters, though originally the site only display a short preview. Now the full text is accessible free on the web. His conclusion: “As an editor, I will continue to stand athwart modern liberalism yelling, ‘Stop!’ To that end I will undoubtedly publish the occasional blazing polemic. But I am also cognizant of my role as a senior figure in the conservative movement, with all the responsibilities that entails. I am now approaching the age that Erwin [Glikes] was when he hired me, and […]