By Robert Miller NEW YORK: I’ve just read M.J. Rose’s editorial from last Friday, “Publishers Must Change the Way Authors Get Paid,” and I couldn’t agree more that it’s time to re-think the publisher/author relationship. M.J. deserves credit for moving this conversation forward; indeed, for years M.J. has shown by her own example how authors can and should be full …
Publishers Must Change the Way Authors Get Paid
Editorial by M.J. Rose Shout it from the rooftops, or better yet, hashtag it on Twitter. It’s time to turn the page on how authors get paid. Times have changed, and with them, every aspect of the publishing landscape is morphing. And from my vantage point, nowhere is it changing more than in marketing. Authors aren’t waiting and watching to …
Why Bangkok?
By Timothy Hallinan BANGKOK: Well, as a place to live, it is undoubtedly the most cheerful big city on earth. The Thai people somehow ingest the heat, the gasoline fumes, the permanent Gordian knot of traffic, the heartbreaking poverty, and through some form of internal alchemy turn it into broad, beautiful smiles and almost infinite compassion for the befuddled, sweating …
Is Yale’s Cartoon Controversy Just More Publishing Cowardice?
Sherry Jones, author of The Jewel of Medina, discusses self-censorship and publishers who stand up against threats to freedom of speech and freedom to publish.
In Afghanistan, Women Writers Confront Taboos and Terrorism
By Masha Hamilton I woke up one day this week to an email from my colleague in Kabul. Many of the women who write for the Afghan Women’s Writing Project blog, he said, would probably not be participating for a few days. Typically once or twice a week, the AWWP writers send in essays, poems, and news reports from computers …
Digital Distribution Means Global, Not Local
By Andrew Savikas, vice-president, O’Reilly Media Within a few years (or sooner) more people will read the books we publish at O’Reilly Media in digital form than in print. While it won’t happen that quickly for other publishers, it will happen. That doesn’t mean that print books will go away — it just means that publishing will be about digital …
How “Cons” Challenge the Status of Industry Insiders
By Lance Fensterman My friend and blogger Heidi McDonald describes San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) as the Nerd Prom, and I cannot imagine a more apt description. SDCC started in a hotel basement as a modest gathering of comic lovers some forty years ago and has grown into the epicenter of the entire pop culture world or, at the very least, …
The Database Dilemma: Managing the Publicity “List”
By Chris Artis A book publicist is only as good as his or her Rolodex. That was one of the first things I learned nearly two decades ago, when I was an assistant in a two-person publicity department in a small New York publishing house. My boss’s Rolodex was large and overstuffed with the business cards of editors, reporters, and …
Why Publishing Cannot Be Saved (As It Is)
Editorial by Richard Eoin Nash The book business is a tiny industry perched atop a massive hobby. But rather than celebrate and serve the hobbyists, we expect them to shell out ever more money for the books we keep throwing at them (a half million English-language books in 2008 in the U.S.). Cutting back might work for individual companies, but …
Will Holden Caulfield be Hijacked?
By David L. Fox The pending U.S. publication of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, a self-described “sequel to one of our most beloved classics” that portrays the adventures of an aged Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye, has brought a court challenge by the famously litigious J.D. Salinger. Each side is accusing the other of hijacking …