Category Archives: digital publishing

March 26, 2013   Yassine   digital publishing, e-books, future of publishing, opinion, technology, trends, Yassine  
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Creatures of Habit

Over the weekend my roommate was showing me an app on his smartphone, one that analyses your sleeping pattern. You place your smartphone in bed and by charting your movements the app is able to determine whether you are in a deep sleep state or a light sleep state. The app then programs your alarm to wake you up in the light sleep phase closest to the time you wish to wake up, thus ensuring that you will start off your day bright eyed and bushy tailed.

What interested me about this device however is that its output consists of graphs, numbers and statistics, data which does not visually reflect the more subjective and emotional side of sleep, which is dreams. Does the empirical complement or explain the ethereal? Can raw data explain why I always miss the last minute winning goal for my boyhood soccer team? (It’s a recurring dream, so I’ll always get another chance).

With this swirling around my head, I was drawn to this article on the Guardian. The article posits that e-books are a different genre from print books because, “With the book, the reader’s relationship to the text is private, and the book is continuous over space, time and reader. Neither of these propositions is necessarily the case with the e-book. The e-book gathers a great deal of information about our reading habits: when we start to read, when we stop, how quickly or slowly we read, when we skip pages, when we re-read, what we choose to highlight, what we choose to read next.”

To link my personal anecdote with the article – will the e-book and its possibility to trace and digest our preferences change the role of our relationship with books? Much like the alarm being set to suit the sleeper, will the e-book become malleable to the reader’s preferences?

I am still chewing this over and over. I see the journalist’s point, that by being able to extrapolate a reader’s reading habits through an e-book we would be able to see what kind of reader we are through a set of data, that can then be used to adapt the text, “If 50% of readers stopped reading you postmodernist thriller at page 98, the publisher might recommend that for Version 2.0, the plot twist on page 110 be brought forward.”

It is indeed an interesting perspective to the future , but is not yet the reality, which is why I am still mulling over the possibilities over private vs. public reading habits. In the meantime, let me know what you think of this article. Is this the way you view e-books? I’ll get back to you in a future blog post with more thoughts on this debate and I’ll let you know if I ever score that winning goal!

January 30, 2013   Miriam   debate, digital publishing, e-books, future of publishing, Miriam, optimism, self-publishing  
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The best of all possible worlds

Last night I walked a couple of blocks down Fifth Avenue to the brownstone home of the Salmagundi Art Club for a panel discussion of “Publishing in the Digital Age” hosted by the Deadline Club.  It was a miserable evening, weather-wise (as soon as I walked out the door of 1 Union Square West, the heavens opened, cabs splashed water as I waited for the lights to change, and my hair took on the proportions of Diana Ross’ favorite wig), but the panel discussion was lively and informative.

The question on everyone’s mind seemed to be “Should we panic about the state of the book business in the wake of the digital revolution or do we dare be optimistic.”  Our job on the panel was to illuminate the big issues preoccupying publishers and authors while attempting not to freak anyone out.  Overall, my fellow panelists and I were quite optimistic about the opportunities digital publishing affords while still admitting to twinges of regret over the passing of the traditional, wood paneled, musty smelling industry we all came of age in.

The optimism on our end came down to “choice.”  Authors have more choices now than they ever did.  They can self-publish easily and relatively economically if they choose or they can go through the traditional channels and, if that doesn’t pan out, go back to the idea of self-publishing.  Before e-books, if an author was rejected by enough agents and publishers, the idea of printing and distributing his or her own work was a daunting one.  Now, it’s a relatively painless process.

So, how is this good news to us inside the industry?  Well, what empowers authors usually empowers agents and, perhaps to a lesser degree, publishers.  Publishers and agents still provide an invaluable service in terms of curating literary material.  We still bring experience, love of craft, and critical acumen to bear on the process of book making and we’re pretty good at it.  And, authors and readers know this.  While self-publishing is now a thriving business, traditional publishing continues to publish more (digital and print) books every year.   And readers continue to buy these curated products.   Despite the perception of the business as the Titanic wildly trying to skirt the iceberg, publishers are making real efforts to keep up with the changing times so that they can bring their traditional talents to bear on the work authors are producing today.

Not to get all Panglossian about it, but isn’t this the best of all possible worlds?

December 04, 2012   Yassine   adaptation, authors, creativity, digital publishing, e-books, future of publishing, multimedia, opinion, technology, Yassine  
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Building Books

As December rolls around, the perpetual question of “What would you like from Santa” is to be found in e-mails from supremely organized family members.  Just as well, then, that a compendium of “Best of 2012” lists abounds, and over the last few days I have been taking a gander at these lists, most obviously the lists for best books.

One of the ubiquitous occupants of these lists is the “book” BUILDING STORIES by Chris Ware. Although, in one review I read, calling Ware’s work a book, would be doing the book a disservice. BUILDING STORIES comes in a box and is compiled of fourteen pamphlets that readers are free to read in whichever order they choose. Readers are then able to re-order the sequence in which they read the materials again and again. In a sense, where is the last page of this book?

Or does there necessarily have to be one? Ware’s book in a box certainly grabs your attention through its inventiveness, but should we be at all surprised? With the expanding array of reading devices, the way we read books is growing ever more diverse, and what we read is becoming ever more multifaceted in the digital world. Books such as HISTORY OF A PLEASURE SEEKER have grown to become an interactive nest of audio, pictures, archives and art.

With these new forms of storytelling, where do you stand as an author? Is Ware an author in the traditional sense, or more of a compiler of artifacts? What do you think of multimedia being a part of your reading material? Is the digital reader set to become a digital explorer?

September 25, 2012   abby   Abby, digital publishing, Discoverability, e-books, future of publishing, marketing/publicity, self-publishing  
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Book Discovery

When I’m talking about eBooks with authors, something that always comes up is the idea of discoverability– how to get readers to actually find and purchase one of your titles. With so many titles out there, which is especially true on sites like Amazon, how do you get a reader to find your book?

So I was particularly interested in this survey posted by Digital Book World earlier in the week. What is fascinating about the findings is that people are using more and more ways to discover new works. According to Kelly Gallagher, who presented the results, readers use 44 different techniques to discover new titles. That’s a lot of ground to cover for an author.

The author of the DBW article puts it best when he says, “Imagine the complexity: a 27-year-old female romance reader from suburban Indianapolis who reads on a tablet computer but spends most of her time browsing the Web on her laptop versus a 43-year-old female romance reader living in Los Angeles who reads and buys exclusively on her e-reader. They’re both romance readers and female, but couldn’t be more different otherwise when it comes to how they discover and read books — and reaching them takes different marketing tactics.”

Something that also caught my eye: the #1 way people discover books, no matter what kind of reader they are? Either in person or through personal recommendations.

So where does an author begin? And do you find yourself discovering books in new ways?

 

August 30, 2012   Michael   digital publishing, e-books, fiction, future of publishing, trends  
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Serial for dinner

One of the great things about the digital revolution is that it’s opening the market to different kinds of formats, some new, some old. One of the most successful and most interesting companies to take advantage of the opportunity is Byliner. They got off to a great start in 2011 with the publication of Jon Krakauer’s damning reporting on author Greg Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute and his book, Three Cups of Tea. Entitled Three Cups of Deceit, Krakauer’s more-than-article-length, less-than-book-length work proved that people were willing to pay for great investigative, long-form journalism, even if it wasn’t 80,000 words. They’ve continued with other similar successes, blazing a trail in this rather new format.

But they’re looking to revive old formats, as well, and I was thrilled to read that they’ve decided to delve into the publication of serial fiction. I was just discussing with an author of mine her desire to publish serialized fiction and lamenting the lack of outlets for it. (Or, rather, the lack of money-making outlets for it. As she said, the world of fan fiction is almost entirely serialized storytelling.) I predicted that serialized fiction would become a viable model, but not until a major name got the ball rolling and proved that there was a market. And Byliner made my prediction come true both quickly and rather spectacularly: they’re publishing two serialized stories, Positron by Margaret Atwood and 15 Gothic Street by Joe McGinniss. Atwood’s sounds very, well, Atwood, and McGinniss’s story was described as “Law & Order set in Lake Wobegon.” Both authors’ followings seemed primed for an experiment like this, and it’ll be interesting to see how they perform. I, for one, am a big fan of experiments in underused formats, and I’d love to see this become another venue for authors’ work. And, as someone whose reading time is limited, I’d love something that’s easily digestible and doesn’t require a huge investment of time in one sitting, while also providing a over-arching story.

What do you think?  Will we see a return to Victorian-era serialized novels? Or is this just another passing trend?

August 28, 2012   abby   Abby, digital publishing, e-books, future of publishing, Paperback books, Publishing  
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Lessons from History

I don’t know if you heard, but eBooks are changing the way people read and the way books are published. The digital revolution is turning the publishing industry on its head and forcing everyone—from readers to publishers to authors—to change and evolve.

But what is interesting to note is that a little more than 80 years ago, publishers and readers were experiencing the same thing. Mental Floss has this pithy history of the paperback book and how it transformed the publishing industry during the late 30’s and 40’s.

Basically, in 1939, a company called Pocket Books began releasing paperback books for $0.25 while the best-selling hardcover books were going for around $2.75. The low cost of paperback books was enabled by their cheaper production costs. (Sound familiar?) Publishers and authors originally scoffed at such cheap products, but when nine million paperback books sold in six months, authors and publishers jumped at the opportunity. (Notice any parallels?)

Needless to say, paperback books have become a mainstay of the publishing industry. And looking at their very similar history to eBooks, I wonder if a lot of the naysaying about the digital revolution is wrong. Do you think eBooks are just the next evolution of reading? Or are we really headed for the end of the publishing industry as we know it?

July 31, 2012   abby   Abby, digital publishing, e-books, future of publishing, publishers, self-publishing  
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Penguin’s Big Buy

You may have heard the news that Penguin Group has bought Author Solutions—one of the larger self-publishing platforms—for $116m. Not only is that a lot of money to invest in a company, it also speaks quite a bit about how traditional publishers have started to view self-publishing.

 

There’s no doubt that the current eBook market has seen a number of self-publishers find a great deal of success and notoriety. With this investment, it looks like Penguin is betting that self-published authors are a big part of publishing’s future. It is also a step in lending credibility to the self-publishing marketplace and its authors, who were once viewed as writers as who just couldn’t hack it as professional authors. Now, with the potential backing of a Big 6 publisher, that stigma may disappear.

 

It is still unclear how Author Solutions will be integrated into Penguin, though. Will Author Solutions replace Penguin’s Book Country platform? Or, more interestingly, will Penguin open up its own self-publishng arm (like Amazon’s KDP or Barnes and Nobles PubIt!)?

 

What do you think of Penguin’s big buy? Do you think we’re likely to see similar purchases in the future?

July 17, 2012   abby   Abby, authors, controversy, debate, digital publishing, e-books, Facebook, piracy  
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eBook Piracy

In a digital publishing world, how do we deal with piracy? Authors and readers alike have strong opinions about piracy, DRM (a special kind of coding that is added to some eBooks so you can’t do things like copy and paste or print out an entire eBook), and how to stop eBooks from being stolen. And some have more creative solutions than others. The Guardian recently shared this piece about author Terry Goodkind and his own special brand of revenge. After finding a pirated copy of his self-published title THE FIRST CONFESSOR: THE LEGEND OF MAGDA available online, Terry took to his Facebook to out his pirate to fans and publicly shame him for stealing the eBook (including posting a photo of the alleged pirate).

And it worked.

The pirate removed all of his links to Goodkind’s book and Goodkind considers this a victory.

The question is: should we be castigating people who make pirated eBooks available? Or, as Paul Coelho believes, does piracy stir readers’ interest and sales? Goodkind believes it removes any incentive to legitimately purchase an author’s work. What do you think? Should authors put a lot of effort into combating piracy?

July 03, 2012   abby   Abby, controversy, digital publishing, e-books  
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Big Brother is Watching You (Read)!

A really interesting article came out in the Wall Street Journal about eBooks and how readers read, giving a realistic peek into what readers want. The article talks about how retailers can now use eBook readers to mine data about how readers interact with their books—how long they read for, when they put a book down or what they read next. This kind of data opens up a whole new world to eBook retailers and publishers—data that was previous unavailable.

 Knowing when readers lose interest in a text or how many pages they are likely to read before walking away will help authors and publishers create eBooks that keep readers hooked and hopefully coming back for more. It could also be the first step in creating a truly interactive eBook, where readers get to leave feedback and interact (via the eBook) with authors and publishers.

 However, this new data also raises questions about privacy—reading, which was once a completely individual and solitary act, is now being shared and studied by big name companies and publishers. Devices such as the Kindle or Nook can now record exactly what it is you do while using your device. This information is then sent to eBook retailers for analysis. It’s not quite spying, but it is like having someone looking over your shoulder and taking notes about your reading habits.

 What do you think? Does it worry you that companies like Amazon and Barnes & Noble are now analyzing every word you read? Or does the lack of privacy get outweighed by the benefits that this data can provide? Do you think this kind of data will help publishers give readers a better experience?

May 22, 2012   John   digital publishing, fiction, John, opinion, short stories  
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“Men’s fiction”

As a self-described “men’s fiction” guy, I was intrigued by the announcement this week that Esquire is launching an e-book series aptly titled “Fiction for Men.” A collaboration with e-book publisher Open Road Media, the first volume launches in June with short stories from Aaron Gwyn, Luis Alberto Urrea and Jess Walter. According to the Times, a new volume will follow every few months.

To my mind, any new attempt to showcase fiction is to be commended. But I was struck by the idea that the anthology is partly an attempt to answer the question “what is men’s fiction?” It’s a question I’ve certainly pondered as an agent. Yes, it’s reductionist, but “Women’s fiction” is a pretty well-defined category in publishing—if I have a novel that I think falls under the “women’s fiction” banner, I have a good idea of the editors I would approach for that. But “men’s”? Not so easy to suss out.

Now, I know that part of the reason for the lack of definition is that “men’s fiction” often falls into other pretty well-defined categories—thrillers, suspense, mystery, sci-fi, horror, etc. And then there’s the “literary” tag, which often neatly avoids gender-specific designations, though what makes a book “literary” is an even knottier question. But what do you do with a book that’s about men, mostly likely written by a man, yet doesn’t fit into any of these boxes, and to call it “literary” would be a stretch?

Well, on first glance, Fiction for Men doesn’t really help matters. Yes, they’re showcasing some pretty heavy hitters, but wouldn’t Gwyn, Urrea and Walter fall under the literary banner, rather than “men’s”? On the other hand, in the June/July print issue, Esquire has works by Stephen King and Joe Hill, Lee Child, and Colum McCann—Two horror guys, a suspense writer, and yes, a man of letters (i.e, literary!). Of course, who knows what they’ll actually write, but ostensibly, it seems like Esquire is just as confused as I am. Then again, maybe that’s the point…

Perhaps once Fiction for Men gets going, we’ll have a better idea of what Esquire means by the category. And from there, maybe we’ll see if it has any effect on how publishers define their lists. Meanwhile, I’ll throw the question out there–what does “men’s fiction” mean to you?

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