publishing
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Keep in Mind: 59% of Readers Don’t Care About eBooks
Ebook sales have slowed down. Flattened. Softened. Whatever word you want to call it. Worldwide sales for the first quarter this year? They declined. Over at Rough Type, Nicholas Carr speculated a little bit about why eBook sales have so abruptly become steady, rather than revolutionary. Specifically, he brought up the iPad. I’ve thought about the indirect…
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Amazon is Not Waging a “War” Against Books
Amazon is waging a war against “bookstores” and “book culture.” According to a new article from Salon, anyway. Well, if Amazon is at war, I guess I’m a soldier. Of the last three books I’ve bought, two have been through Amazon, for my smartphone. Why? Because they’re obscure business books that I was confident I…
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J.K. Rowling and the New Author’s Discoverability Problem
By now, anyone in the literary world… who reads Internet News… has learned that J.K. Rowling released a novel about four months ago under a man’s name. Robert Galbraith, to be exact. The book, The Cuckoo’s Calling, sold a whopping 1,500 copies in four months. Meanwhile, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by contrast, sold 8.3 million…
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What Amazon’s Win Against Apple (Really) Means for Books
So, recently, the federal court in New York ruled that Apple played a “central role” in fixing eBook prices with publishers. The goal was to keep the cost of an eBook at $12.99, instead of $9.99. This has ushered in a wave of speculation about the future of both pricing and print books and eBooks.…
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Assassins Among the Bookshelves: “Showrooming” is Deadly
If you ask a local business about “showrooming,” they’ll either scowl or, more likely, look befuddled. The practice is booming among consumers, though, and any business owner has probably seen it: a customer walks into the store, browses the shelves, and then whips out her smartphone. A few minutes later, she’s gone. Where’d she go?…
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Publishers Are Actually Getting Excited About eBooks
The general grumbling from book publishers and bookstores alike is that the whole eBook format is going to destroy them. Smart-mouthed, tech savvy people who like Disruption are quick to agree. They call publishers “dinosaurs” who don’t get it, and other mean things. Really, publishers are trying to get quality books into the hands of…
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If There Are No Bookstores, What Can Publishers Do For Authors?
Book sales are hard to figure out. On the one hand, we’ve seen a slow dip in sales for the past few years. On the other hand, independent bookstores reported a 10% spike in sales for the last holiday season. Then again, one study found that 85% of children readers aged 2-13 are using tablets…
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How Amazon is Trying to Rescue Literary Fiction
Who’s going to save literary fiction? Prominent agents have said that big publishers these days are just focused on pushing out blockbuster titles. You know, things that will sell millions. That leaves self-proclaimed “literary authors” that write “literary fiction” biting their nails. But never fear, literary authors… Amazon is here. That’s right – the online…
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