Stressed About Books

May 31, 2013 | News

Speaking engagements can be stressful for publishing professionals. At the annual gathering of the book clan known as BookExpo America, though, any pressure to perform on stage at the Javits Center in New York City is nothing like what some senior book executives will...

Digital Backlist Rights Fight

May 26, 2013 | Copyright

2013 is a milestone year for copyright.  On January 1, US copyright law began to allow authors or their families to terminate valid contracts signed after January 1, 1978, once 35 years have elapsed.  The revolution in digital publishing that has begun to tip the...

Penguin Pays Up

May 24, 2013 | News

At a famous trade book publishing house, they say, “the monkey pays the bills.” What they mean is that a perennially successful line of children’s books earns its keep and more. This week, though, we learned that a Penguin has a bill to pay, and it’s a whopper –...

Universities Face Open Access Challenge

May 19, 2013 | Copyright

As the demand for Open Access (OA) journals and articles increases, so has the frequency with which academic institutions are submitting payments for APCs (article processing charges) to publishers. As a result, universities face a number of challenges new to the...

Apple Readies Book Case

May 17, 2013 | News

The digital dynamo prepares to stand its ground in the ebook price-fixing case coming next month to a Manhattan courtroom. Meanwhile, book industry insiders discover they will have to settle for double-digit growth in ebook sales, after years of triple-digit jumps....

More Than Books For BookExpo

May 12, 2013 | News

What to expect at BookExpo America for 2013? Books, of course, from the Big 6 publishers to the growing ranks of the indies. Authors, too, naturally – often seated at the end of long lines of autograph-seekers, and this year, as part of UPublish U, they’re sharing...

Books Make Good Listening

May 10, 2013 | News

The idea is often advanced that the rise of video on the Web will undermine reading habits – and that in a contest of pictures over words, the words will come out the loser. The jury is still out, but the spoken word has long enjoyed a warm relationship with books,...

Copyright, Content & Congress

May 8, 2013 | Events, Podcasts

Video’s leap from the big screen and the living room onto office computers and tablets has been speedy. In training, sales, and marketing, businesses have taken fast to film and video, typically by including scenes and full-length motion pictures and TV programs...

Reaching Readers

May 5, 2013 | News

As online merchants displace brick and mortar bookstores, the move throws publishers out of a business-to-business environment and into the arms of consumers. That paradigm shift from B2B to B2C is likely to see emergence of consumer-focused verticals in publishing,...

Hot Books Start With ‘Hot House’

May 3, 2013 | News

With more books appearing every day, finding a book that’s worth the money and time it takes to read becomes a challenge. The publishing business worries over this as much as readers do, and they’ve taken to talking frantically at conferences about “discoverability.”...