writing
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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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Is Writing & Music & Art Getting Specialized to Death?
I just watched “Dear Mr. Watterson,” a light-hearted documentary about the impact that Bill Watterson’s ever-famous, ever-persistent comic strip, Calvin & Hobbes, has had on people over the years. The part that gripped me most was when several prominent cartoonists spoke in extremely gloomy terms about new media. Berkeley Breathed, the cartoonist behind Opus, Bloom County, and Outland,…
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The Robots that Write… and Do Everything Else, Too
A while ago, I read the excellent book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McCafee, Race Against the Machine. Since then, I’ve thought a lot about automation, whether I’m looking at Google’s driverless cars or checking out at CVS through a self-service kiosk. It’s a weird time to be alive and, if the common wisdom about robots these…
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Fitzgerald & Hemmingway Were Bloggers, Too
Sometimes, I feel guilty about blogging. It’s a little pinching sensation, probably a sensation most writers are familiar with – the feeling that you’re wasting time you should be using to work on your novel. That’s why I was reassured when I read a recent interview with a professor about “the Lost Generation” and found…
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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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The Future of eBooks: Werewolf Love Stories, 3 for a Dollar
Sometimes, I like to do market research about eBooks by acting like someone looking for deals. I did that the other day and the first challenge, as usual, was finding out where I could actually find eBooks on Amazon. They don’t make it as easy as it should be… but I don’t think Amazon is that…
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Publishers Are Testing Unknown Authors Digitally… What Does That Mean?
A lot of writers view self-publishing eBooks as a slog to the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not that we necessarily want to market all of our stuff and pump out eight books a year to make a living. It’s just what has to happen if publishers keep setting their sights on blockbusters. Well,…
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