As the success of 50 Shades of Grey makes clear, the book business has made piece with the self-published author. Now one of the best-selling authors in history, E.L. James first made her work available to readers via non-traditional, self-publishing routes. James is hardly alone, however, as not a week goes by without word of [...]
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Best of BTB: Winning Publishing Strategies
There’s no business like show business to serve as a model for book publishing, according to industry veteran Bruce Harris, who spoke this summer at the Yale Publishing Course. “When you’re doing a show, a group of talented people come together. They focus on a particular task. And they get very involved, and very intense [...]
Best of BTB: “50 Shades” and More of Self-Publishing
Recorded this summer at uPublishU, the day-long self-publishing pre-conference program of BookExpo. Featuring Jenny Pedroza, co-founder of the Writers Coffee Shop; Mark Coker, Founder, Smashwords; Sandra (Sandy) Poirier-Diaz, President, Smith Publicity, Incorporated; and Bob Young, CEO & Founder, Lulu.com. This panel’s industry insiders know how to ensure that a book will stand out in the [...]
Best of BTB: Not Sharing, Not Stealing – Infringement
At the recent OnCopyright 2012 conference, Robert Levine explained for the audience in a keynote speech how the commonly used language of copyright shapes the debate and makes for confusion on the fundamentals “I don’t think copyright infringement is stealing,” he told the Columbia Law School audience. “The idea that this is stealing, I think, [...]
Best of BTB: ‘Obama Book Club’ Meets At BookExpo
White House administrations generate books like leaves grow on trees. This video was recorded only 18 months into the Barack Obama presidency, and already the titles were flourishing in publishers’ catalogs. Two of the most anticipated such books – THE PROMISE: President Obama, Year One, from Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, and OVERHAUL: Inside the Obama [...]
Best of BTB: “50 Shades” and More of Self-Publishing
Recorded earlier this summer at uPublishU, the day-long self-publishing pre-conference program of BookExpo. Featuring Jenny Pedroza, co-founder of the Writers Coffee Shop; Mark Coker, Founder, Smashwords; Sandra (Sandy) Poirier-Diaz, President, Smith Publicity, Incorporated; and Bob Young, CEO & Founder, Lulu.com. This panel’s industry insiders know how to ensure that a book will stand out in [...]
Best of BTB: Measuring the E-book Market
The e-book revolution is underway, and moving beyond North America. Using actual data – and not forecasts – The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections, is considered an important step to understanding the global impact of this watershed publishing moment. “We saw that reading devices, as well as tablet devices, have been very, [...]
Best of BTB: Arab Spring Update
As popular uprisings have spread across the Middle East and North Africa, media pundits have credited Twitter and Facebook. But one Egyptian-born journalist based in New York says the acclaim for social media is misplaced, even though she admits to a Twitter addiction herself. “It was a revolution of courage, rather than a revolution of [...]
Best of BTB: Just My Type
Typefaces, like superheroes, all have origin stories. From Garamond to Georgia, Palatino to Proforma, the look of letters tracks back in time to a single fascinating moment of origination. Joining CCC’s Chris Kenneally to go beyond the book – diving down to the level of individual letters – is Simon Garfield, the author of “Just [...]
Best of BTB: The Writing Game
It’s late October, and while “the boys of summer” play out their last innings, professional and college football teams keep cheering crowds in their seats even as temperatures fall. And everywhere, the fans pore over the best in sports journalism. “I don’t want to pretend that sports figures are the best representatives of American culture, [...]
